


Trophy Husband by Lynne Graham

by Writersofthegalaxy



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Adaptation, Alpha Tony Stark, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Angst with a Happy Ending, Feminization, M/M, Omega Peter Parker, Precious Peter Parker, Size Difference, Smut, fem peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:15:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27089239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writersofthegalaxy/pseuds/Writersofthegalaxy
Summary: ***THIS IS AN ADAPATION OF A STORY BY LYNNE GRAHAM**********ALL CREDITS GOES TO THE RIGHTFUL OWNER*********Hidden agendas...The personal assistant: When Peter, a sweet omega, caught his fiancé and future mate being unfaithful with his cousin, he felt doubly betrayed.His boss: Almost miraculously, Tony Stark, an alpha, was on hand to help Peter pick up the pieces. However, having worked for Tony for some time now, Peter knew Tony never did anything without expecting something in return. So why was he surprised when Tony revealed that he was prepared to pay the cost of having him— be it money or marriage?Business or pleasure?Peter wanted Tony so badly, he would have given himself to him with no strings attached. But in order to win Tony, Peter would have to play the alpha’s game—and choose his price
Relationships: Peter Parker/Other(s), Peter Parker/Tony Stark, Tony Stark/Other(s)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 209





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ***THIS IS AN ADAPATION OF A STORY BY LYNNE GRAHAM***  
> *******ALL CREDITS GOES TO THE RIGHTFUL OWNER*********
> 
> If you see any grammar mistakes please let me know as this story originally had a female/male relationship
> 
> ENJOY!

CHAPTER ONE

PETER paid off the taxi in a breathless rush and raced up the stairs to the flat he shared with Jane. Had they been burgled? Had someone in the family had an accident? Worse still, had something happened to Brian? His imagination had gone into overdrive since he had received Jane's message at work.

'Dalton said you had to come home immediately, that it was very urgent,' the girl on the switchboard had stressed anxiously. 'I hope it isn't bad news. She wouldn't even wait for me to put her call through.'

Crossing the landing at speed, Peter unlocked the door of the flat. It was a disorientating experience. Loud music assaulted his ears. The Weeknd's latest album was playing full blast. A single electric-blue court shoe lay abandoned like a question mark on the hall carpet.

'Jane?' Peter called, a quick frown of bewilderment drawing his fine brows together as he glanced into the empty lounge. The bedroom door was ajar. He pressed it back.

'Jane?' he said again, and only then did he see the half-naked couple passionately entangled on the rumpled bed.

'Peter?' his cousin squealed as she reeled up, her honey-blonde hair wildly mussed up, her pink mouth swollen, pale blue eyes wide with horror.  
In the very act of embarrassed retreat, Peter froze. His attention had lodged on the tousled male head lifting off the white pillows. Recognition hit him like a punch in the stomach. Cruel fingers clutched at his heart and his lungs, tripping his heartbeat, depriving him of the air he needed to breathe.

'Oh, my God...' Brian groaned, grabbing up his shirt and rolling off the bed in one appalled movement.  
Jane was frantically struggling back into her blouse. 'Why the hell aren't you at work?' she screamed.

'You phoned... left a message that I was to come home,' Peter framed unevenly, not even recognising the distant voice that emerged from his bloodless lips as his own.

“I phoned? Are you crazy?' Jane shrieked furiously. 'Whoever phoned, you can be sure it wasn't me!'

'You bitch, Jane!' Brian bit out in stricken condemnation. 'You deliberately set me up—''Don't be stupid!' Jane hissed, but then without warning defiance replaced her angry discomfiture. She rested malicious blue eyes on Peter, who was already backing away on legs that were threatening to fold beneath him. 'But I did warn you that Brian was mine for the asking...didn't I?'

“'No...' Brian's voice wavered weakly as his gaze collided with Peter's shattered green eyes—pools of stark pain in the dead white stillness of his face. He made a sudden move towards him, both hands raised and extended as if to draw him back to him. 'This has never happened before, Peter... I swear it!'

Peter turned jerkily away and fled. He nearly fell down the last flight of stairs—Brian's frantic calls from the landing above acted on him like a trip- wire. Blocking him out, he steadied himself with one shaking hand on the dingy wall and made himself breathe in slowly and deeply before he walked back out onto the street.

Jane and Brian. Brian and Jane. He stared down numbly at the ring on his engagement finger. His stomach lurched in violent protest. Six weeks off the wedding day... his cousin and his fiance. It was as if the world had stopped turning suddenly, flinging him off into frightening free fall. He was in shock—so deep in shock that he couldn't even think. But his memory was relentlessly throwing up scraps of dialogue from the recent past.

'Brian chose you like he chooses his shirts...you've got to look good at the company dinners!' Jane had sniped.

'Three years ago I could have lifted one little finger and Brian would have come running... He really had it bad for me.' Jane had savoured the words.

Peter squared his narrow shoulders, caught a glimpse of himself in a shop window and stared. He saw a small omega with brown hair, dressed in an unexciting navy business suit and white blouse. No competition for a five-foot-ten-inch blonde who had once made it between the covers of Vogue. He felt as if he was dying inside. He didn't know what to do, where to go.

A bus was drawing up at the stop several yards away and he started to run. His dazed eyes skimmed over the man standing in a nearby doorway. He turned his head abruptly, making him wonder if he looked as odd as he felt. He didn't notice that the man swiftly fell into step behind him and climbed on the same bus.

'Do we have to have Jane as a bridesmaid? My mother can't stand her,' Brian had complained peevishly.

'She's a real tart,' he had muttered with distaste. 'No decent woman would take her clothes off for money...'

Still with-the same man tracking patiently in his wake, but quite unaware of his presence, Peter wandered back into the hugely impressive London headquarters of Stark Industries. When the receptionist on the penultimate floor addressed him, Peter didn't hear her. Blind and deaf, he was moving on automatic pilot. He entered the spacious office which he shared with Sam Hunniford. It was empty. Sam's wife had gone into labour mid- morning, he recalled then. It was like remembering something that had happened a lifetime ago. His phone was buzzing like an angry wasp. He sat down and answered it.

'Tasmin Laslo here. I want to speak to Tony,' a taut female voice demanded.

' Stark is in conference. I am so sorry. Would you like me to—?' The actress said a very rude word. 'You're lying, aren't you?'

Peter had been lying to Tony Stark's women for the entire year that he had been employed as his social secretary. Tony Stark was very rarely available to his lovers during office hours, and when a name was removed from a certain regularly updated list he was never available again. Lying went with the territory, no matter how much Peter despised the necessity.

'He sent me a diamond bracelet while I was filming in Hungary and I knew it was over!' Tasmin suddenly spat tempestuously. 'He's found someone else, hasn't he?'

'You're better off without him, Laslo,' Peter heard himself saying. 'You're a wonderful actress. You're wasted on a slick, swine like Tony Stark!'

Incredulous silence hummed on the line. 'I beg your pardon?' Tasmin finally gasped.

Peter looked down dazedly at the receiver and thrust it back on the cradle in shock. He was trembling all over. Dear heaven, had he really said that? He rose unsteadily upright again. His stomach cramped with sudden, unbearable nausea. He lurched into the cloakroom across the corridor and was horribly sick.

Ten minutes later, still shaking like a leaf, he returned to his office. The phone was buzzing again. He ignored it, walked over to Sam's desk and withdrew the bottle of brandy that he kept in the bottom drawer. He poured a liberal amount into a cup and slowly drank it down, grimacing at the unfamiliar taste of alcohol. Maybe it would settle his stomach. Brian and Jane. Their names linked in a ceaseless refrain inside his pounding head, making him want to smash his head against the wall in protest.

He felt as if he was going mad. Sensible, steady Peter, who always kept his head in a crisis. But Peter had never before faced a crisis in which his whole world had fallen apart. Shivering, he helped himself to another nip of brandy, struggling to get a grip on himself. 'No decent woman...' A choked and humourless laugh escaped him. He tore the ring off his finger, dropped it in a drawer and rammed the drawer shut. He made himself pick up the phone again.

Unfortunately it was his aunt on the line. Something about the wedding rehearsal. Peter froze while Jane's mother talked. Then he sat down, and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. 'Aunt Janice?' he hesitated and then forced himself on. 'I'm sorry but the wedding's off. Brian and I have broken up.' Even to his own ears he sounded unreal, like someone clumsily cracking a joke in the worst possible taste.

'Don't be silly, Peter,' Janice Dalton murmured sharply. 'What on earth are you talking about?'

'Brian and I have broken up. I'm very sorry...but we've decided we can't get married after all.'

'If you've had some foolish argument with Brian, I suggest you sort it out quickly,' his aunt told him with icy restraint. 'Brian had lunch with us yesterday and there was nothing wrong then!'

The line went dead as his aunt cut the connection. Peter trembled. Jane's mother... how could he have told her the truth? Janice and Hugh Dalton had given him a home when his own mother had died.

How could he possibly tell them the truth? Much better simply to pretend that he and Brian had had a change of heart-much cleaner, much less embarrassing for all concerned. The two families were neighbours and friends. A giant lump thickened his throat. Did Brian love Jane?

'No decent woman...' Jane had shed her clothes with alacrity when she had been offered the chance to feature in the famous Stark calendar. Marco, Tony Stark's kid brother, had smoothly offered Peter the same opportunity, unperturbed by his incredulous embarrassment. 'You've got something your long, tall cousin hasn't got... You're really sexy... and you have a lot of class.'

Marco had made the invitation in front of a highly amused audience at the staff party and it had become a tormenting, running joke in the months which had followed. The instant that Marco had seen Peter redden he had realised that he had found a real live target. Every time he saw Peter, he offered him an increasingly fantastic sum to bare all. No doubt he saw in him what everyone wanted to see, Peter reflected bitterly: a man the exact, boring opposite of his exciting, beautiful cousin. Prim, quiet, predictable, ludicrously unlikely ever to set the world... or indeed any man... on fire.

Jane had had Peter christened Prissy Prude at school, and, having created that image for him, had then delighted in shattering it by sharing the news that Peter was illegitimate, the inconvenient result of his youthful mother's holiday fling with a Greek waiter. Some of the omegas hadn't laughed at first but they had soon fallen into line and obediently giggled and sneered. After all, Jane had been the undeniable leader of the pack and peer pressure had been relentless. Peter had duly been persecuted, no other girl or boy daring to stand their ground against Jane lest they find themselves enduring the same ordeal. To escape, Peter had left school at sixteen and taken a secretarial course. And that had not been his dream.

But Brian had been his dream...

Suddenly, with a violence that shook him, Peter hated everything about himself—his body, his personality, his inhibitions, his clothing. He was boring, laughably out of step with other women or man in his age group. Old- fashioned, sexually ignorant, eager to give up his job and become a stay at home husband and mother at twenty-three. He should have been born a century ago.

Out of the corner of his eye, he finally noticed that the door was open. Slowly he lifted his head and panic filled him, his eyes flying wide to accentuate the exotic slant of his cheekbones. Tony Stark was standing there as silent as a sleek predator on the prowl... and both phones were ringing off the hook, unanswered. He should have been in Rome this afternoon, not here in London, he thought stupidly.

'Coffee-break?' Tony murmured in a curiously quiet voice instead of letting fly at him as he had expected. The phones stopped abruptly as if the switchboard had cut them off, plunging them into a sudden, thunderous silence.

In a daze, he looked back at him. Six feet three inches of lithe, rawly virile masculinity. Black hair, hard bronze profile with the deep, dark, flashing eyes of his Italian ancestry. A sexually devastating mate with an overwhelmingly physical presence that few men could equal. And Peter hated being near him. He hated the way he looked at him. He hated the way he spoke to him.

If the cost of setting up the first marital home hadn't been so extortionate, Peter would have sacrificed his excellent salary and taken a lesser position elsewhere within a week of being exposed to Tony Stark's sardonic asides and contemptuously amused appraisals. He made the omega feel so murderously uncomfortable... so self-conscious, so ridiculous. He made him feel like a curious specimen trapped behind museum glass.

'Finish your coffee.' A lean, long-fingered brown hand casually closed round the half-full cup of brandy sitting on the edge of his desk and extended it to him.

Didn't he smell the alcohol, realise that it wasn't black coffee? Evidently, obviously not. Jerkily, Peter reached out and accepted the cup and focused on the alpha’s beautifully polished shoes, every muscle whip-taut. He tossed back the rest of the brandy in a burning surge. It brought tears to his eyes, which he blinked back furiously.

'Where's Sam?'

'Still at the hospital with his wife.' Peter struggled for some desperate semblance of normality, astonished that he wasn't cutting him to ribbons with the satirical edge of his tongue. Peter forced himself upright, bracing both hands on the desk. Involuntarily his gaze collided with shimmering dark golden eyes and it was like falling on an electric fence, shock waves making every raw nerve ending scream. Deliberately he turned his head away, closing him out again. No, he was not susceptible. He had proved that to him satisfaction over and over again.

"Then I'm afraid you'll have to take his place.'

'His place?' Nobody could possibly take Sam Hunniford's place. Sam was Tony's most devoted gofer, nothing came between Sam and ambition. He had freely admitted to Peter that his first marriage had fallen apart because he was never at home. And right at this minute, if Tony employed his cellphone, Pete would be out of the labour ward like a rocket.

'Nothing too onerous... Relax,' Tony breathed in that distinctively rich dark voice which rolled down the omega’s spine like golden honey, burning wherever it touched. 'I only want you to take down a couple of letters.'

His brow furrowed as he automatically lifted a pad and pencils. He was talking very slowly, not with his usual quick impatience. He hadn't even asked him why he hadn't answered the phones. He stood back for Peter to precede him from the room, and in his need to keep as much physical space between them as possible Peter jerked sideways and skidded off balance.  
Strong hands whipped out and closed round his upper arms to steady him. His head swam, his heartbeat kicking wildly against his chestbone. He quivered, fighting off sudden dizziness, and he drew him back. 'OK?' he murmured, still holding Peter on the threshold.

'F-fine... Sorry.' His nostrils flared in dismay as the warm, definably male scent of him washed over her, Aromatic, intrinsically familiar, alpha. Alpha? What was the matter with him? What the heck was the matter with him? As he stiffened the alpha released him and he walked down the corridor with careful small steps, noticing that the double doors of his office at the end looked peculiarly out of focus. Now near, now far, now skewed. All that brandy. Drunk in charge of a phone. But it felt shamelessly, unbelievably good: a short-term anaesthetic against the enormous pain waiting to jump on him—the pain he could not yet face head-on. As long as he didn't think, he could protect himself.

'Sit down, Peter.' He plotted a course across the thick carpet with immense care and sank down on the nearest seat, suddenly terrified that he would notice the state he was in. Being intoxicated suddenly didn't feel good any more. In Tony Stark's presence, it felt like sheer insanity. Discovery would be unbelievably demeaning.

Disorientatedly, he glanced up and found him standing over him. Peter flinched. His hands trembled and he anchored them tightly round the pad. He didn't sit down. He strolled with silent grace across to the floor-length windows. A stunningly handsome man, he had an innate elegance of movement, his superbly cut mohair and silk-blend charcoal-grey suit the perfect complementary frame to wide shoulders, lean hips and long, powerful thighs.

From beneath luxuriant black lashes he surveyed him. 'Shall I begin?'

He didn't normally request permission. Uncertainly the omega nodded. He dictated with incredibly long pauses that enabled him more or less to keep up but he still missed bits because her mind wouldn't stay in one place. Shock was giving way to reality, denial giving way to bursts of agonised pain. For how long had Brian been deceiving him with Jane? His memory threw up the image of the open bottle of wine in the lounge, the half-filled wineglasses by the bed. No sudden passion there. They had carried the glasses with them into the bedroom. A carefully staged lunchtime encounter when Peter should have been at work.

'Did you get all that?'

The page currently beneath Peter’s fingers was blank. Briefly he simply closed his eyes, willing himself to find calm and control.

'It's all right, Peter... the letter isn't important.'

The softness of the assurance astonished him. Dazedly the omega’s glanced up, encountered Tony Stark's brilliant dark eyes and was mesmerised by the sincerity he read there. He was resting against the edge of his polished desk, far too close for comfort. He reached down and removed the pad from Peter’s nerveless fingers, setting it carelessly aside.

'Something has upset you...' he drawled.

The omega’s creamy, perfect skin tightened over his fine facial bones as he focused on his silk tie. 'No...'

'You're not wearing your ring.'

Peter went white. The pencil he was fiddling with snapped in two.

'You are clearly distressed,' Tony murmured in the same quiet, disturbingly gentle tone which Peter had never heard him employ before. 'I believe you were called home unexpectedly this morning. What happened there?'

Peter was appalled to discover that he wanted to tell him, spill out the poison building up inside him, but instead he bit down hard on his tongue.

'Perhaps you would prefer to go home for the rest of the day?' Tony suggested lethally.

'No...' Peter muttered, horror bringing him back to life. Jane would be waiting for him and he could not yet face that confrontation.

'Why not?' he prompted him.

'I found my fiance in bed with my cousin.' As soon as Peter had said it he could not believe that he had said that out loud and to him of all people. A tide of chagrined colour crawled up his slender throat.

But Tony Stark didn't bat a magnificent eyelash and his response was instantaneous. 'A merciful escape.'

'Escape?' Peter queried blankly.

Tony spread beautifully shaped hands expressively. 'Think how much more disturbing it would have been had you discovered such a sordid liaison after the wedding.'

"There isn't going to be a wedding now,' Peter said shakily, and whereas telling that same fact to his aunt had seemed like part of a living nightmare it now felt like hard, agonising reality.

'Of course not. No omega would forgive such a betrayal, would them?' Tony drawled softly.

The silence hummed. The tip of his tongue snaked out to moisten his dry lower lip. Forgiveness... understanding. Brian had been asking for both within seconds. He had not stood shoulder to shoulder with Jane...

'After all,' Tony continued with honeyed persistence. How could you ever trust him again? Or her?'

The darkness sank back down over Peter where for an instant he had seen a wild, hopeful chink of light.

'Were you thinking of giving him another chance?' Tony enquired in a tone of polite astonishment.

Peter flinched. 'No,' he muttered sickly, duly forced to see the impossibility of ever trusting again.

Yet he could not believe that he was actually having such a conversation with Tony Stark, who was not known for his concerned and benevolent interest in his employees' personal problems. Indeed, the Stark credo was that the best employees left their private life outside the door of Stark Industries and never, ever allowed that private life to interfere with their work.

'Why are you talking to me like this?' the omega whispered helplessly. 'Do you have anyone else to confide in?'

Peter tried and failed to swallow. It was almost as if he knew, but how could he possibly know how frighteningly isolated Peter now was? He could not turn to Jane's parents and he had no other relatives, no close friends who were not also Brian's friends or colleagues. 'No, but-'

'Nothing you have told me will go any further,' Tony asserted, his night- dark eyes, sharp and shrewd as knives, trained on the omega, but those eyes were no longer cutting, no longer cold, no longer grimly amused.

'You're being so kind,' Peter said in a wobbly tone as he fought to conceal his disbelief, for this was a side of his character that he had never thought to see, indeed never dreamt existed.

'You have had a traumatic experience and, naturally, I am concerned.' 'Thank you, but I don't need your pity,' Peter bit out painfully.

'The very last thing you inspire is pity,' Tony assured him, unleashing a wry smile of reproof on him. 'You should be celebrating your freedom. Life is far too short for regrets. You've already wasted two years of it on that little salesman. The future has to offer far more entertaining possibilities—'

'How did you know Brian was a salesman?' Peter breathed, the words slurring slightly.

'Isn't he? He looks like one,' Tony informed him smoothly.  
Something not quite right tugged at the omega’s instincts and then drifted away again, for nothing in his entire world was right any more.

'You live with your cousin, don't you?' Tony probed.  
Again Peter was disconcerted by his knowledge and perhaps it showed, because he added, 'Marco mentioned it to me.'

'Yes.' Peter flushed, reluctantly recalling all the unwanted, gory details which had been forced on him during Jane's short-lived affair with Tony's brother. That connection had embarrassed Peter.

'Naturally you do not want to return to your home at this moment,' Tony murmured, and casually tossed a set of keys onto his lap. 'You can use the company apartment until you have made other arrangements.'

Even in the state he was in Peter was staggered by such a proposition. The apartment was a penthouse on the floor above, used only by the Stark family and, very occasionally, their personal friends. 'I couldn't possibly—'

'Where else have you got to go?'

Peter clutched the keys, meaning to return them but thinking helplessly of the humiliation of dealing with Jane as he felt now. His strained eyes unguarded and vulnerable, Peter stared back at him. 'I'm very grateful.' 

'A fresh start,' Tony murmured intently. 'I'm having a dinner party tonight. Why don't you come? You shouldn't be on your own.'

A nervous laugh lodged in his aching throat. A party! He thought that he was in the mood for a party? Was Tony insane or just downright incapable of comprehending the immensity of what had happened to Peter today?

'I'll be fine,' he returned tremulously, wondering if he needed someone to supervise the caterers. Pete usually attended Tony's dinner parties, checked the seating arrangements, oiled the conversation and ensured that everything went smoothly. Tony Stark paid for that kind of service. Tony Stark was so rich that he could afford to burn money for amusement.

'I'll call you later. I'll send a car to pick you up at seven,' Tony told him as if he hadn't spoken.

Dully he fumbled for an excuse. 'I have nothing—'

'I'll buy you a dress or a suit to wear. No problem, amore. Don't even think about something so trivial.'

'But I—'

Strong brown hands reached down and closed over his, tugging him gently upright. He angled the omega towards the door as if he were a walking doll. 'Go up to the apartment and lie down for a while; practice thinking optimistic, happy thoughts. Smile...' he urged softly, and a blunt fingertip skimmed below the trembling curve of Peter’s full lower lip and withdrew again, the contact feather-light and strangely soothing.

Unwarily, like someone in a dream, Peter looked up at him, connected with shimmering, mesmeric gold eyes and staggered slightly. He balanced him again with ease. An ache unlike anything he had ever experienced made him shiver. ' Mr. Stark—'

'Tony... Cristo” he exploded, abruptly freeing him.  
Peter almost fell over. Numbly he watched him stride over to sweep up the phone that he hadn't even heard ringing. He swung smoothly back to him. 'Go up to the apartment and lie down,' he

instructed him again.

Peter backed out slowly and walked back down to his office to collect his bag. His head was aching. He put a hand up to his hair and undid the tight plait, running his fingers through the loosened tresses. The phone on his desk was ringing. For an instant he hesitated, and then he lifted it.

'Peter?' Sam demanded impatiently. 'Where have you been?' 'I was-'

'Look, I need a favour,' he broke in. 'Tony told me to get Marco's signature on some papers yesterday but I forgot. They're in the top right-hand drawer in my desk. Take a cab over to the studio and get it seen to before Tony asks for them... OK?'

Peter took a deep breath, grimaced and then wearily sighed. 'OK.' 'You're an angel. I bet your replacement won't be half so helpful.'

The reminder that he was actually working out his notice hit Peter hard as he climbed into a taxi. He would be in the dole queue soon, he realised dully. His successor was already picked, due to take his place in a fortnight's time. Brian hadn't wanted a working mate. And he had no savings. He had poured every penny of his salary into renovating and furnishing the Victorian terrace house that Brian had bought. Weekends and evenings, he had scraped walls, plastered, decorated, cut out and sewn and hung curtains. He had put his heart into transforming that house. The knowledge that now he would never live there sank in on him slowly and then blistered his soul like an acid burn.

Real anger began to rise inside him. Three years ago Peter had stood by, watching Brian pursue Jane without success. But his cousin would take just for the sake of taking, and throughout the years that

Peter had lived in the Dalton home he had been taught that lesson over and over again. Anything he had been foolish enough to value had inevitably been taken from him by his cousin... only this time it had not been a toy or a sentimental keepsake, it had been the man he loved. He clambered dizzily out of the cab with a white, frozen face.

He had never been in Marco Stark's high-tech photographic studio before. The reception area was incredibly busy. It made him feel claustrophobic. He forced his passage through the throng and trekked down the corridor indicated by the laconic redhead on the desk.  
Marco was lying back in a chair inside the perimeter of a blinding circle of lights in an empty studio. He looked half-asleep but his mobile dark brows hit his hairline at speed when he saw Peter hovering, and he sprang upright with a mocking smile. 'To what do I owe the honor? Don't tell me you've finally decided to take me up on my offer? Mr December in red boots and a tasteful sprinkling of holly berries...what do you think?'

Peter gritted his teeth as he felt his cheeks burn. He was in no mood to take one of Marco's baiting sessions. Evading his malicious gaze, he murmured flatly as he extended the file, 'These documents require your signature.'

Marco suddenly laughed.

'What's so funny?' Peter heard himself demand almost aggressively, the words slurring slightly.

'Private joke.'

'If it's about me, it's not private!' Peter told him fiercely, standing his ground.

Marco surveyed him with intense amusement. 'There's a price.' 'A price?'

Marco laughed again. 'You tell me something first...haven't you ever once got the hots in my brother's radius?'

Peter looked back at him blankly. 'Excuse me?'

'Tony is a very good-looking guy, beats the omegas off with sticks. If he wasn't family, I'd hate the smooth bastard! Come on, you can tell me...if it wasn't for true love, you'd have given him a whirl, right? You know that movie where Robert Redford pays a million bucks for one night with Demi Moore—Indecent Proposal"! You too could have made your fortune...'

'I don't understand.' It was a lie. Peter just couldn't believe what Marco was insinuating.

Marco dealt him an incredulous glance. 'Are you saying you didn't even notice? Or are you telling me that Tony didn't once chance his arm?'

'If you are trying to imply that your brother is attracted to me, you're wrong—'

'To the tune of a million bucks? He could drop a million without noticing. No, the sum I heard mentioned was two million,' Marco imparted with undeniable relish. 'I think Tony thought just one was bargain basement.'

Peter's head was swimming again. It was so hot beneath the lights that he couldn't concentrate. 'This is a very distasteful conversation, Marco.'

'So Tony wants to jump your bones... is that some sort of crime? Lust makes the world go round,' he told him impatiently.

Tony Stark wanted to go to bed with him? His lashes fluttered in bemusement. He couldn't believe it.

Marco shook his head slowly. 'You really didn't know, did you? Love is truly blind. But hey, don't let your heart soften in his direction. Remind yourself that you don't like him and steer clear. Marry your insurance salesman and live happily ever after,' he advised very drily as he flipped through the file and began scrawling his signature.  
Tony Stark wanted him? Rubbish, nonsense, Marco's deliberate mistake—doubtless another example of his nasty sense of humor. 'You don't like him'. Had his dislike of Tony Stark been so obvious that even his brother was aware of it? He remembered Tony's astonishing kindness and tolerance and a stark arrow of guilt abruptly pierced him.

No, he had never liked Tony Stark—his arrogance, his impatience, his sardonic tongue, his rich man's self-centred motivation which took no account of anything but his own wishes, his own needs.

Peter had never liked the way he treated omegas either. As if they were things that he could buy and discard when he got bored... and he got bored so fast that your head would spin. Fast cars, fast omegas, fast-lane life. Nightclubs, movie premieres, gambling joints, summer in the South of France, winter in the Alps. When the beautiful face and body of his latest lover palled, they got twenty-four regulation red roses and a diamond bracelet. Imaginative in that line he wasn't.

Why should he be? Omegas were easy around Tony Stark. He didn't need to lie and cheat and deceive. He had no need to make promises that he had no intention of keeping...

Oh, Brian, how could you do this to me?

For the first time Peter met his own anguish head-on, and he swayed slightly, his temples pounding. The heat was suffocating him. His blouse was sticking to his skin. In a clumsy movement he tugged off his jacket and breathed in deeply. Two million pounds... He wanted to laugh like a hysteric. It was so ridiculous...

'You know getting married costs a lot,' Marco murmured reflectively, watching Peter with fascinated eyes as the jacket slid from his limp fingers to the floor. 'Why don't you reconsider my offer? Nobody will ever know. I wouldn't be planning on publishing the shots. It could be your secret... and mine.'

As Peter attempted to focus on him, there was a sudden commotion out beyond the lights. A raw burst of Italian scorched his eardrums. A fist hit Marco on the shoulder, hard enough to knock him back, and suddenly Tony was there, ranting at his brother and with every blistering sentence punching him on the shoulder again, forcing him into retreat, like a boxer playing with a weal opponent.

White-faced, Marco leapt behind Peter. 'Dio...switch him off before he kills somebody!' 


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

PETER’S eyes were wide with shock and incomprehension.

'I'm ashamed of you!' Tony roared at Marco, his strong features a mask of dark fury. 'For a bet, for a lousy fifty K. He's smashed out of his mind! He doesn't even know what day it is!'

'Peter’s still a hell of a lot safer with me than he is with you!' Marco condemned furiously. 'And why shouldn't I have asked him?'

'Get out of my sight, you little jerk! Think yourself lucky it didn't go one step further—'

'All I did was make him an offer!' Marco shouted back.

'Then why's he got his jacket off?' Tony demanded with clenched fists.

'He took it off himself! Big deal! He wears more bloody clothes than Scott did in the Antarctic! Can nobody take a joke around here? I'm sorry, Peter,' Marco breathed harshly, turning back to him. 'I didn't know about your engagement, but now the deck is clear I would go for that two million and not a penny less!'

Shoulders unbowed, Marco walked away out beyond lights. “What the hell did you think you were doing coming OVER here in the state you're in?' Tony demanded with ferotious bite.

It was his turn, Peter registered numbly.

'Didn't I tell you to go and lie down? You could have fallen under a bus or something! When I realised you'd gone out again, I couldn't believe it!' Tony gritted, perfect white teeth flashing against sun-bronzed skin.

'I n-needed his signature on some papers.'

'So why did you take your jacket off?' Tony persisted. 'I was hot,' he muttered heavily.

Tony swept down a lean, impatient hand and lifted the article. 'Dio... I should've worked that out for myself. A omega who wears his skirts below the knee and covers up every inch even in the heat of midsummer is highly unlikely to strip off for the camera. You're too much of a prude.'

Peter went suddenly rigid. Anger roared up through her without warning. 'I am not a prude!'

Tony had fallen very still. 'So you do have a temper,' he murmured in a tone of discovery.

'Just don't put me down,' he warned him unevenly, shaken now by the anger that had mushroomed up inside him and demanded an exit.  
Tony drew fluidly back several paces and spread graceful brown hands. 'I was worried about you. You see, my creepy little brother laid a bet with me six months ago—'.

'A bet?' Peter echoed with a frown.

'He bet me fifty thousand pounds that he could get you to pose in the nude.'

Peter shuddered, sick mortification flooding him.

'It never occurred to me that there was the slightest possibility you would fulfil that bet. You're not the type. It was a joke, Peter. Marco loves a good joke; sometimes, like today, he's tempted to take it too far.'

Peter studied the floor with burning eyes. He could feel the tears but they were mercifully dammed up. 'A good joke'. His stomach twisted. A lousy alpha bet had lain behind Marco's constant baiting. A choked laugh fell from his tremulous mouth. He couldn't meet Tony's gaze. Marco had never had the smallest hope of winning his puerile bet but Tony had still chased after him. Why? Tony was already painfully well aware that he had gone off the rails once today. All along, he registered in anguished embarrassment, he had known that Peter was drunk.

'I've made an ass of myself,' the omega whispered with stinging bitterness.

'You haven't made an ass of yourself,' Tony breathed with raw emphasis. 'You've had a rough day. That's all.'

He quivered, a turmoil of emotion sweeping over him. He wanted Brian's arms round him so badly that he thought he would break apart. But Brian would never put his arms round him again. That was finished, dead, destroyed. More pain than he would have believed possible was suddenly coming at him from all sides. His hands knotted together.

'You really love that bastard,' Tony murmured flatly.

Peter covered his cold face with spread fingers, as if he could somehow hold in what he was feeling. He fought to get a grip on himself again.

A pair of determined hands drew him forward and balanced him. With enormous effort, he managed to slide his arms obediently into the jacket which Tony extended.

'What was the crack about the two million?'

Peter's slender length tensed as he shakily tugged his hair out from his forehead and shook it back out of his way.

'You have the most beautiful hair. I always wanted to see it loose.' Tony's dark eyes rested on the silky black torrent tumbling down to his waist. 'Don't ever get it cut.'

He slowly lifted his head, bewildered brown eyes colliding with smouldering gold. It was electrifying. Stunned, she kept on looking at him. 'Marco said... Marco said you'd pay two million pounds for one night with me...'

Tony tautened, dark colour accentuating his hard cheekbones. 'You are even more drunk than I thought you were.'

His glazed eyes fell from Tony’s. 'I've put my foot in my mouth—'

'I intend to put my fist in Marco's.'

'I was only joking.'

Tony pressed him towards the door. 'He wasn't...' 'H-honestly?' he stammered in disbelief.

'You think I'd be here if it wasn't true?'

He guided him out through the buzzing reception area. His blitzed brain was endeavouring to absorb what he had confirmed. Tony Stark wanted him. He found Peter desirable. What would have threatened and appalled him a mere twelve hours earlier now, for some reason, fascinated him. 'You were so kind this afternoon—'

'And I wouldn't be kind without a hidden agenda?' 'No,' Peter said without even thinking about it.

A chauffeur was standing by the door of a silver limousine. Peter climbed in, slid along the richly upholstered leather seat. His luxurious surroundings made no impression on him at all. Don't think about Brian, don't think about Brian, he urged himself feverishly. 'Why didn't you...? I mean, you never showed—''Peter, I'm not a lovesick teenager. I find you physically very attractive. That is chemistry.' 

'Sex.'

'Sex,' Tony agreed drily.

Was that the way Brian wanted Jane? Did it matter whether it was love or infatuation or simply lust which had motivated him? Would love hurt any more than the way Peter was already feeling? Had it only been guilt which had made him chase out of the flat in his wake? Stop it...stop it a little voice shrieked inside him. It's over, Peter. Accept it. Tony was right. You could never trust Brian again.

'You think I'm very naive,' Peter muttered, closing out the seething turmoil threatening him again.

'No. I don't think this is the time for this conversation.'

'I don't believe in love anymore.' For hadn't Brian done all the right things? Romantic cards, constant phone calls. Last night he had been with Peter, holding hands, smiling...the consummate actor, and he had been the blind fool, for he had noticed nothing different.

'How would you like to sink into an alcoholic stupor and have a nice long sleep?' Tony enquired with unconcealed hope.

'Very, very much,' Peter whispered painfully.

The silence pulsed with undertones that he didn't understand.

'I really didn't know your feelings went this deep.' A grim laugh splintered from him.

Peter didn't show his feelings. He had learnt that young. But today he had been brutally wrenched out of his protective shell. 'How could you know?'

'I thought you were more in love with the bridal trappings ... not to mention the wallpaper books, fabric swatches and paint-cards,' Tony enumerated with sardonic bite.

'I wanted a home that was really mine. Easy to mock what you've always had, Tony.' Peter shot him a look of angry intensity that challenged him and then tore his gaze away again, but he stayed etched in his mind's eye. The gleaming black hair, the slashing brows, the hard, arrogant slant of his mouth and nose. Hard—that was the definitive word. He might be possessed of a quite intoxicating masculine beauty but the raw stamp of power and fierce force of will overlaid those spectacular dark good looks like bonded steel.

Peter’s head was pounding sickly. 'I'm not even asking you where we're going...'

'You're safe with me. Tonight you don't have to think for yourself.'

He closed his aching eyes. The one alpha in the world whom he would never, ever have trusted and yet all of a sudden he instinctively did trust him. Tony Stark, protector. Peter ought to have laughed at the idea but instead he fell asleep.

Peter surfaced from a nightmare, shivering and perspiring. He sat up with a dizzy start and found himself in a completely unfamiliar room. The bedside lamps were lit on either side of the wide divan bed. The sheet tangled round him was silk. He lifted an uncertain hand to the thin, strappy nightdress clinging to the damp thrust of his chest and fell still only when he saw the tall, dark male rising from a chair in the shadows.

'Tony...' he whispered shakily as it all came back in jagged bits and pieces and he breathed in sharply in relief, helplessly reassured by his presence.

'Feel like something to eat?' He sounded so normal, so casual.

'Where am I...? Oh, Lord, to have to ask that,' he muttered between clenched teeth.

'This is my house. I didn't think leaving you alone in the company apartment would be very wise—'

'Your dinner party.'

'Cancelled. Not one of my better ideas.'

From below the screen of his lashes Peter surveyed him with inescapable fascination. Nothing seemed real—not the day's events, certainly not the extraordinary alteration that had taken place in their relationship within the space of hours. He had not looked before he'd leapt today. He had looked for him, watched over him, kept him safe. Why? Did he want Peter so much that he was prepared to put up with him as he was now?

'I'll order some food.'

The door flipped quietly shut in his wake but still he looked to where Tony had been. He had got blindly, foolishly drunk and Tony Stark had picked up the pieces. But he hadn't expected him to react that way... What had Tony expected? Why should he have expected anything when he couldn't have known what would happen to Peter today? The dinner party—'Not one of my better ideas'. He had talked almost as though the dinner party had been stage-managed in advance for his entertainment, which was crazy. Peter must have misunderstood him.

He slid out of bed. His head was still swimming a little. He grimaced at the foul taste in his mouth and was exceedingly grateful to find a bathroom through the other door that he had espied. His own tousled reflection in the mirror shook him. Peeling off the nightdress, he switched on the shower and stepped into the cubicle, grateful for the warm water and the rich lather of the soap that would wash him clean.

Who had undressed him and put him to bed? Tony? How strange that he shouldn't be plunged into stricken mortification over the idea. 

Yesterday he would have died a thousand deaths. Today—tonight—he knew that he had already betrayed so much to Tony Stark that the once slavishly cherished sanctity of his own body no longer seemed worthy of such earth-shattering importance.

And why didn't Peter face it? He had very probably driven Brian into Jane's arms! He had refused to sleep with him before they got married. Deaf to his every protest, he had been determined to wait for their wedding night, had smugly believed that the sexual restraint would lend an extra- special meaning to the vows they would take. Only now there wasn't going to be a wedding day... and it was cold comfort to acknowledge that he had saved his virginity but lost the man he loved. Maybe he had got exactly what he deserved. Peter had put his wretched principles first and where had it got him? He slid back into bed, forcing his cold face into the pillow, raw with the bitter pain of rejection and humiliation. Nothing was ever going to give him his pride back.

He didn't hear the door open; Peter went rigid when he was gathered up into strong male arms, and then his nostrils flared on the scent of Tony and he trembled, his arms uncoiling and curving round Tony very, very slowly. No, I mustn't do this...she thought. But it felt so good, so damned good to be held close. The breath shortened in his dry throat. His fingers splayed centimetre by centimetre across one powerful shoulder and stayed there. He was almost paralysed by his own daring.

The silence thundered in the omega ears. 

Tony released his breath in a faint hiss and Peter could feel the savage tension in Tony’s taut, muscular frame and the pounding of his accelerated heartbeat against Peter’s. And Peter smiled for the first time in hours with a sense of gratified wonder and curved even closer, his other hand sliding against Tony’s silk shirt-front, feeling the heat of his flesh burning through the fine fabric. His response was intoxicating.

'Is this a solo party...or a masquerade?' Tony demanded softly. 'I am not him. You will not close your eyes in my arms and pretend that I am.'

Shocked, Peter tipped his head back, eyes wide, and met a vibrant challenge. 'I know who you are,' he whispered dazedly, yet in his arms, even with his eyes open, he felt as if he was living some fantastic dream.

Lean hands closed gently round Peter’s wrists and pushed him back against the pillows. Tony curved one long-fingered hand to Peter’s cheekbone and held him still, raking him bewildered face with grim intensity. 'You want me to want you now,' Tony said tautly.

It was the truth, although he hadn't seen it for himself. Hectic color lashed the omega’s cheeks beneath that appraisal. 'Yes...'  
'Not like this,' Tony swore, his eloquent mouth hardening. 'And not tonight.'

Peter had been stumbling round like a clown half the day under Tony’s gaze. No doubt whatever imagined attraction he had endowed Peter with had evaporated fast when he had been faced with such pathetic reality. Tony Stark was accustomed to sophisticated omegas and none of those experienced omegas would ever have made such a fool of themselves in his presence as Peter had. As Tony released him a semi-hysterical laugh was torn from Peter. It came out of nowhere and shook him.

'Don't...' Tony reproved him thickly. 'I want to make love to you very badly. I've wanted you for a long time but I won't take advantage of you when you don't know what you're doing.'

But Peter did know, for he knew himself far better than Tony did and he wasn't the type to have an affair with his boss, or the sort of omega who longed to see himself made notorious in newsprint as Tony Stark's latest bed-partner for a few adventurous weeks. There would be no tomorrow for them; there was only tonight. He couldn't take his eyes off Peter, he registered in fascination.

'Peter...?' he prompted rawly, his blunt cheekbones overlaid with dark color and prominent with ferocious tension.

Brown eyes gazed back at him in defiant challenge. 'One night... and it won't cost you two million. It won't cost you anything. I don't put a price on myself,' Peter told him with a bitter edge to his voice because he knew now that once he had put a price on his body and that price had been a wedding ring.

'Cristo...' Tony seethed down at him in sudden incredulous frustration. 'What's come over you that you're talking like this?'

Peter’s honey-like eyes were relentlessly nailed to his as an unfamiliar feeling of power took his over. 'I want...1 want to be wanted tonight...'

'OK...' Tony sprang upright in one driven motion and stared fulminatingly down at him. 'But you remember that this is not how I wanted it to be between us.'

And how had he imagined it would be? The two million for one wild night? Had that been his sexual fantasy? Or a few candlelit dinners, a lot of Italian charm and compliments and so to bed? Tony usually conducted his affairs with style. With flowers, gifts, country weekends, cruises on his fabulous yacht, Sea Spring. This was more honest—much more honest— than either proposition and Peter did know exactly what he was doing, didn't he...? Didn't he? For an instant Peter had a frightening glimpse of his own emotional turmoil and knew that he was actually on the brink of an abyss, knew that he simply couldn't bear the thought of the long, lonely hours of the night which stretched ahead, knew that Tony's desire was balm to his savaged ego.

But had any omega but him ever wanted Tony Stark for company rather than physical gratification? Peter wasn't expecting the latter, wasn't expecting any rolling waves to hit any metaphoric seashores, could be honest enough now to admit to himself that he had never been particularly interested in that aspect of human relations, even with Brian. It had been no sacrifice for him to practice celibacy. All that clumsy, awkward, heavy- breathing stuff had, frankly, left her cold, but he was intelligent enough to accept that other omega didn't feel that way. He had often heard his own sex talk unashamedly about their sexual urges and once he had worried that there was something lacking in him because he did not feel the same needs as they apparently did. Then Peter had come to terms with his own essential coolness in that field.

He heard the shower switch off, the door open again, the sound of Tony’s footfalls on the thick carpet and thought, Dear heaven, what am I doing? Am I crazy, am I on the edge of a breakdown to be inviting an intimacy that I don't even want? And then Tony reached for him, pulling him up against him with a long, powerful arm. A stifled gasp of shock escaped the omega’s as he drew him into remorseless contact with every lean, hard line of his masculine physique. He rolled lithely over on the bed, taking Peter with him, and gazed down at him with burning eyes.

'You can change your mind,' Tony told him not quit evenly.

Eyes to drown in, eyes to tempt a saint, so wickedly beautiful in that hard male face that they took his breath away. Peter looked up at him, bereft of words, suddenly hopelessly entrapped by that all-enveloping gaze. He wondered, in a state of complete abstraction, what it would be like to be kissed by him, which was about as far as his craven imagination was inclined to take him.

'I want the lights on... I don't want you to forget... amore mio,' he murmured with a sudden fractured roughness that tingled down Peter’s spinal cord and made him shiver. Forget what? he almost asked, but he couldn't make his voice work and it didn't seem important.

Tony wound his forefinger into a silky strand of Peter’s hair and slowly lowered his dark head, almost as if he expected him to shout, No! at the last possible moment, but Peter was wholly entranced.

And then he found out what his mouth felt like on hiss and the omega froze when Tony’s tongue probed between his parted lips. He had never liked that... but his sensual mouth became more insistent, more demanding and he trembled, pulses suddenly racing, heart accelerating madly, and he discovered that he had no resistance, no urge to pull back from that intoxicating pleasure.

Peter’s head swam, a kind of stunned disbelief threatening to demand utterance, but Tony kissed him breathless and it would have taken restraint to initiate dialogue and he had none at all. He was carried blindly from one seductive kiss to the next, as badly hooked as an addict on heady delight.

Sure fingers moved against the full of his ass and a surge of such tormenting excitement took Peter in its grasp that his mind was a complete blank. He couldn't think, indeed he could barely breathe as he felt his own flesh swell, his nipples pinching into tight, prominent buds. Tony ran his mouth down the extended line of her throat, strung a line of inflaming kisses along his collar-bone, dallied on pulse-points and places he didn't know he had until that moment, and left him weak but with every skin cell alive with quivering, devastating anticipation.

'Look at me...' Tony demanded.

Peter lashes flew up on command. He looked, lingered, drowned in smouldering black. 'Tony,' he mumbled shakily, the fingers of one seeking hand pushing through his thick dark hair, shaping his head in an involuntary caress that also held him fast.

A brilliant smile flashed across Tony’s sensual mouth. He ran the tip of his tongue teasingly down the valley between his chest and he shivered violently. 'Tony,' he said again without the smallest shade of doubt.

He peeled the nightdress out of his determined path, slowly shaped the quivering thrust of his achingly sensitive flesh with expert hands and then imprisoned a throbbing pink nipple in his mouth, suckling hungrily at the tender bud. His whole body jerked in the surge of scorching heat that he evoked, the sudden, shattering, first-time pull of nerve-endings awakening to sexual passion taking him over. What remained of his control vanished simultaneously.

Peter heard a voice moaning, didn't recognise it as his own, his fingers tightly gripping the hot, sleek smoothness of Tony’s shoulders as his back arched. Pleasure he had never dreamt of was shooting through him in agonising waves and there was hardly a pause between one peak and the next. He twisted beneath him, couldn't stay still, wanting, needing, his thighs trembling, tightening on the ache building inside him.

Tony said something caressing in Italian, and the last thought that Peter would afterwards recall was that Italian was definitely the language of love in that incredibly rich deep voice of his, and then he skimmed a hand through the damp curls at the base of his taut stomach and the world became a delirious, multicoloured shower of lights behind his lowered eyelids as Tony discovered the hardness at the very heart of him.

He cried out, gasped, shuddered. The hungry ache fired higher and higher, the strength of his own need biting so deep that it hurt, driving him to the edge of torment and making him plant desperate little kisses over any part of Tony that he could reach, his tongue tasting him, Peter teeth grazing Tony as his slender hips rose pleadingly against his most intimate caresses.

'Wait...' Tony groaned raggedly. A split second after he drew back from him Peter tugged him back again with insistent hands and covered his mouth wildly, feverishly with his own, automatically utilizing everything that he had taught him to keep him in the circle of his arms. He stiffened and then with an earthy groan surrendered with raw enthusiasm, his long, muscular length shuddering as his hands settled on the omega’s thighs and he moved against Peter, freeing his swollen lips, gazing down at him with ferocious hunger. 'If this is a dream, I don't ever want to wake up,' he confessed with passionate conviction.

'Tony...' he gasped tautly, his entire quivering body reaching up to Tony’s in helpless need, reacting with liquid-honey-enticement to the tantalizing, hot, hard probe of his flesh against his.

The surge of pain caught him on the crest of tortured anticipation. Peter gasped in shock, eyes flying wide to meet similar shock in his startled gaze. 'Cristo amore...' he said in hoarse disbelief, but the momentary frown etched between his ebony brows was swiftly wiped away and the dark eyes glittered more black than ever.

And then Tony moved again lithely, powerfully deepening his penetration, and a truly stunning wave of breathtaking sensation swept him back into that wild oblivion where only the demands of his own hungry body held sway. With every driving thrust he took Peter with him, made the fire burning inside him flame ever higher, ever more unbearably, until Peter’s teeth clenched and his heartbeat thundered and his nails raked fiercely down Tony’s damp back because the wild, hot pleasure that went on and on only made him more desperate. The explosive burst of his own climax was electrifying. It blew Peter apart, left him trembling in devastated aftershock from a sheer overload of pleasure.

'I feel better in my bed.' Tony was sweeping him up, letting his mouth caress Peter’s again tenderly, then there was movement. That was all his punch-drunk senses could recognize. Peter felt the faint chill of colder air and then a cool sheet against his back before the heat and muscularity of Tony connected with him again. 

'Don't go to sleep,' he instructed Peter, his dark drawl impossibly vibrant and wide awake as he wrapped his arms around the omega possessively and vented a deeply satisfied sigh of slumberous relaxation.

Not waves on shores so much as a golden sun of glory around which he had revolved, he conceded sleepily. So much effort to think...so much easier simply to feel, and Peter felt wonderfully at peace.

'We spend the weekend on the yacht. I'm in Paris on Monday... you'll love Paris, honey. What do you think?' he probed.

What did he think? Peter struggled valiantly to think. He thought that he sounded as if he had closed a tremendously difficult and lucrative business deal which had lost some poor fool a fortune and made him another mountain of money that he didn't need: immensely, shamelessly self- satisfied. At that point Peter’s brain switched off and he shifted with positive contentment into the warm, comforting solidarity of him.

Peter’s nose twitched on the heady scent of flowers. He lifted heavy eyelids slowly, focused on a giant, berib-boned basket of flowers and then another basket... and then another. His mouth went dry. He woke up in a hurry, jerking upright in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar bedroom and gaped at all the flowers surrounding him. His attention lodged on a man's silk tie lying in a tiny splash of crimson on top of a dense, creamy carpet and Peter’s heart plunged as if he had gone down at supersonic speed in a lift.

He nearly fell out of the bed in his haste to vacate it. Memory took him back and then forward. He turned as white as a sheet and suddenly knew without any prompting what being sober really felt like. A case he recognized as his own was sitting by the window. With a pained groan of disbelief, he stared at it. He had somehow got him clothes out of the flat? Oh, dear Lord, what had he done? What had he done?

With frantic hands he tore into the case. Taped to the inner lid was a big piece of paper, slashed with Jane's untidy scrawl. 'What the hell is going on?' it said.

Peter grabbed up a handful of clothes and dived into the ensuite bathroom. He studied himself in the mirror— red, swollen mouth, shadowed eyes, wildly tousled black hair. Trollop, tart, he castigated himself with tears of rage and shame burning his eyes. How could he have behaved like that with Tony Stark? He wanted to sink into a great black hole—no, he wanted to put him into a great black hole and pour tons of concrete over him so that he could never escape and he would never have to meet his eyes again!

Thankfully he had already left for the office... Oh, dear heaven, the office! It was already after nine. Peter would say that he had missed the bus. Nobody would think anything of that; nobody need ever know... but if he had had any choice he wouldn't have walked into Stark Industries ever again. However, there would certainly be talk if he suddenly disappeared and failed to work out the last ten days of his notice—much better to grit his teeth and finish his time there. In any case, Peter conceded bitterly, he badly needed him month's salary because his bank account was almost empty.

Fumbling, with little of his usual dexterity, he contrived to confine his hair into a murderously tight bun at the nape of his neck.

Peter crept out of the bedroom, his arm nearly falling off from the weight of the case he was hauling with him. Tight-mouthed, he dragged it along to the landing at the top of the stairs. With every movement, he was more and more aware of the complaint of newly discovered muscles in unmentionable places and the undeniable ache in the least mentionable place of all, and his rage thundered higher with very step.

'Buon giorno, amore...'

His throat thickened. Slowly Peter straightened, stricken eyes flying to the tall, devastatingly attractive alpha standing at the head of the staircase.

'I was coming up to see if you wanted to join me for breakfast...but we can do without the luggage,' Tony assured him very softly, measuring dark eyes speeding over his furiously flushed face and lingering with incipient shrewdness. 'Don't do it—don't say what's brimming on your lips... Don't disappoint me'

The omega wanted to kick him down the stairs. A temper that he had never had any trouble controlling until now was suddenly threatening to explode. He sucked in air, freezing his facial muscles. 'I happen to be late for work, Mr. Stark.' Ice dripped from every syllable.

Peter hit his lowest ebb as he watched his sensual mouth twist and then compress. He didn't need to be told how ridiculous he had sounded. Then his strong dark face tautened. Brilliant dark eyes rested on his 'Peter... I want you to count to ten and think about last night without prejudice. Is that possible for you?'

'No,' Peter said woodenly, honestly, dragging her mortified gaze from his —an act which took so much will power that he felt drained.

'We shared something very special which I don't want... or intend... to lose. It doesn't matter that you were on the rebound... the only thing that matters is how we both feel now,' Tony drawled very quietly. 'Clean page, open book.'

'Close it,' Peter said between gritted teeth. 'I don't mind you cutting off your nose to spite your face...per Dio, I mind very much if you attempt to make a similar sacrifice of me!' Tony covered the space between them in one long, fluid stride. 'I made a mistake, damn you!' Peter spat, tears scorching his eyes.

'No, amore. That's where you're wrong. What happened between us was no mistake—not for me and not for you either.'

'Am I entitled to voice an opinion of my own?'

'Not right now...no.' Tony lifted the case from him, set it arrogantly aside. 'The prudish streak is threatening to go on the rampage.'

Peter flinched as though he had struck him.

'Amore…' Tony sighed reprovingly, smoothing long brown fingers caressingly over one pale, taut cheekbone, his accented drawl low and very soft. Even though Peter didn't want to stand there and allow Tony to touch him again, something frightening, something stronger than Peter was kept him still, unresisting, his slender length leaning involuntarily closer as if he wanted to curve into that hand and stretch like a sensual cat. 

'Don't leave. I promise not to try and force anything more. You need time and space to think. I'll give it to you. I'll be patient... I'll stay in the background.'

'Tony...' His voice fractured as he fought to free himself from the spell Tony cast even while Peter mentally reeled at the impossible image of Tony Stark endeavouring to sink into the woodwork.

"There's nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to regret—'

'But I don't want this!' Peter gasped, suddenly finding that freedom to speak his own thoughts. He jerked his head away from him. 'I don't want to have an affair with you. Last night was madness—'

'Sweet insanity that worked like a dream... Don't deny what you're feeling right now.'

'I feel nothing...nothing!' Peter swore violently, and, snatching up his case again with an energy born of desperation, he started down the stairs. 

'Peter, you cannot possibly go back into the office after this.'

He caught up with Peter in the hall. A firm hand closed round him and tugged him back and round to face Tony again.

'You think I'm going to be your mistress; you think wrong!' Peter threw at him rawly.

'What did I tell you to be sure to remember today? That this was not how I wanted it to be between us,' Tony reminded him with controlled anger. 

'But you wouldn't settle for anything less and now you blame me for it. That's very omega but bloody unfair."

His shocked eyes fell from Tony’s. 'I'm not blaming you. I just want to forget this happened, that's all.'

'But I will not play that game...and take your hair out of that excruciatingly ugly old-maid style!' Tony suddenly gritted, and hauled him even closer, banding one strong arm round his narrow back as his free hand roved free to the thick coil of hair and released it from its confinement.

'You're a beautiful young omega; rejoice in that beauty...don't stifle it!'

'Let go of me!' Peter told him shrilly.

'All I want to do is take you back to bed,' Tony confided in an undertone of angrily suppressed passion as he brought him up against him, a lean hand splaying to the delicate swell of her hips with a lover's intimacy.

Appalled brown eyes collided with Tony’s gaze and the atmosphere sizzled. Peter blinked bemusedly, feeling the piercingly sweet heat reawaken low in the pit of his stomach, the sudden ache of his nipples as they stirred beneath his clothes. His soft mouth trembled. Tony smiled lazily down at him, shifted with fluid emphasis against him and he felt the force of his arousal with shock. His lower limbs turned to cotton wool.   
His ability to breathe and think for himself diminished with terrifying rapidity. 'Stop it..." Peter whispered breathlessly.

'One kiss, amore mio, and I'll let you go into work,' he bargained mockingly.

'No!' Peter spat as his heartbeat pounded like a trapped bird in a cage.

'Stubborn...' Tony breathed thickly, amused. 'You want that kiss as much as I do.'

'I'm sorry...I didn't realize...I used the rear entrance,' another voice intervened.

Tony's hand dropped instantly. Peter sprang back from him, eyes wide with horror when he saw Sam Hunniford standing several feet away, his mobile features momentarily transfixed with incredulity and then swiftly rearranged into total impassivity.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

PETER stood there like a graven image as Pete handed a file to Tony. 'Peter needs a lift back to the office.' Tony quirked a sardonic black brow

as he glanced reflectively at him 'Unless you've changed your mind, amore?' 'No.' Peter wrenched open the heavy front door for himself, and frankly couldn't get out of the huge house quickly enough.

Tony dropped an arm round him and walked him out onto the top step, seemingly indifferent to a degree of icy, repulsing rigidity which would have frozen off the continuing advances of any normal alpha. 'Lunch at one... Peter?'

Peter was staring in consternation at the man who had darted out from his position by the railings and focused a camera on them both. Click! Grinning, he then ran across the street and jumped into a car. 'How unfortunate,' Tony said, and he didn't even attempt to sound convincing.

The thick atmosphere between Peter and Sam on the drive back to the office would have defied the sharpest knife. 'Right,' Sam began grimly. 'Now the first thing you do is lie like a trooper to dear Brian. You worked late, had to stay over... you say I was there too. You do not confess; do you understand that, Peter? Believe me, Brian does not want the whole truth and nothing but the truth in this instance. That story covers you on all fronts. The paparazzi are always watching Tony. So there'll be a photo of you emerging from his house at ten in the morning in tomorrow's papers... What does that prove? Nothing.'

Paper-pale, Peter parted his lips, unsurprised by his cynical advice but deeply embarrassed by his frankness. 'Sam, I-'

'I can't believe it... You!' he muttered, shaking his smoothly styled head. 'I thought you were bombproof around Tony. I feel responsible. I only gave you the job because you were engaged. Only the day before yesterday you were handing Tony a cup of coffee as though he was the carrier of some dread social disease, and this morning...?'

'Please, let's not talk about it,' Peter mumbled. He thought of yesterday's sunny awakening, his blinkered innocence of what the day would bring. And then this morning's devastating dawn.

'Obviously Tony finally made a move on you. Well, heaven knows, I've been waiting for it to happen. I've worked around Tony a long time. Believe it or not, I like Tony... but if he looked at my sister the way he's always looked at you I'd lock her up and throw away the key... because Tony is very bad news with omegas. He's emotionally cold and detached. I've seen him in action too many times not to know that—'

'Sam...' Had everyone but him been aware of Tony's interest in Peter?

'Your two predecessors fell head over heels for him and made a blasted nuisance of themselves! I thought you had more sense.'

Sense? When and where had sense figured in yesterday's turmoil? He felt cheap and stupid and desperately ashamed of himself. Was that prudish? But he couldn't discard the values of a lifetime overnight. He had invited... no, far worse, virtually pleaded for Tony's sexual attentions. Peter had thrown himself at his head. His stomach cramped with nausea.

How could he have done that? Why had he done it? Had he sunk so low in self-esteem that he had been grateful to Tony Stark for finding him desirable? Had Peter needed the proof that he could still attract a man after seeing Brian in Jane's arms? Or on some level had he sought revenge for that agonizing betrayal? If that had been his motivation, he was now discovering that revenge was a two-edged sword that could turn back on you and inflict piercing pain and regret.

When he and Pete arrived at the office Gina, the svelte receptionist, gave him a curious, veiled look as he murmured a greeting. Two executive secretaries were out in the corridor having a close conversation, but fell silent as he walked past. Their greetings were very muted indeed. Peter didn't have to wait long to find out why. 'Mr. Parker?' A uniformed waiter whipped the covers from a selection of food on a heated trolley. 'Breakfast, compliments of Stark.'

'Bloody hell,' Sam said only half under his breath as he drew to a halt beside him. Clearing his throat, he said rather loudly, 'I hope there's enough for two. Working so late, I slept in—didn't have time for much this morning.'

Peter was so taken aback that he couldn't even throw Sam a look of gratitude for his efforts to cover up for him. In any case, who was likely to believe that Tony had demanded Pete to leave his wife's side and work overtime last night?

Peter sank down behind his desk, watched numbly as the food was served. He hadn't eaten since breakfast yesterday, but he might have eaten last night had he not been far more intent on seducing Tony Stark into spending the night with him. Hectic color fired his creamy skin. Tony hadn't wanted him to return to the office. He would be well aware that such an extravagant gesture would create gossip—the kind of gossip that Peter shrank from. Could he be cruel enough to use that as a weapon against him?

'What did Molly have... a boy or a girl?' he asked, striving valiantly for normality.

'Didn't Tony tell you? He was on the phone a good ten minutes with me yesterday...' Sam flushed. 'Sorry-little girl. We're going to call her Flora.'

'Congratulations.' Peter lifted his knife and fork, his fingers all thumbs. 'Peter... you look like death warmed over,' Pete said, tight-mouthed. 'I'm fine.'

He wondered if he would ever feel fine again. As he forced himself to eat, he drowned in a torrent of brutally unwelcome erotic images. He sat there growing ever more appalled, ever more bewildered by the wanton creature that he had become in Tony Stark's arms. If only it had been unpleasant, sordid, disappointing even... He hated him all the more for the fact that it hadn't been! He did not think that he could ever forgive himself for finding Tony Stark more physically exciting than the man he loved. What did that say about him?

Maybe Peter’s aunt had been right about him all along. Janice Dalton had regularly lectured Peter on the dangers of promiscuity. As a quiet, far from precocious teenager, Peter had found those sessions deeply humiliating and he had bitterly resented the knowledge that the older woman feared the hereditary factor. 'I don't want you turning out like your mother did,' his aunt had told him. Had the mother he barely remembered slept around? The concept had been distastefully implied more than once. There had always been a grim irony in Janice Dalton's blind refusal to see how her own daughter lived her life.

'Peter?' Sam was in the doorway.

Peter glanced up from the accounts that he was checking. His job covered a lot of ground. He had overall responsibility for the day-to-day running of Tony's various homes round the world. He dealt with minor household crises, changes of staff, repair and maintenance bills, indeed all the boring minutiae that Tony didn't have time to deal with but which had to be dealt with if the smooth running of his domestic arrangements was to continue with the faultless efficiency that he took for granted.

'I understand that Tony gave an order that you were| to receive no personal calls yesterday afternoon.'

“Did he?'

Sam grimaced. 'Brian is on his way up in the lift.' Every scrap of color ebbed from Peter’s cheeks. 'See him in here. I'll take myself off.'

'But Tony-'

'So Tony doesn't allow personal visitors... but then Tony isn't in yet.'

Peter stood up slowly. Brian appeared on the threshold. He looked as if he'd been up all night—pasty pale, tense, his eyes bloodshot. Sam closed the door on his way out, giving him a ludicrous thumbs-up sign behind Brian's back.

'Peter...' Brian swallowed. 'What do I say to you?'

It was as if a glass wall stood between them, as though a thousand years had passed since yesterday. 'There's nothing to say.' He felt nothing, absolutely nothing at all, only a terrible emptiness. |

'She'd been chasing after me for weeks,' he muttered unevenly. 'I'm not making excuses... but—'

'It gave you a kick because she wasn't interested three years ago.'

He flushed and then nodded with compressed lips. 'And you just couldn't help yourself.'

His strained brown eyes met Peter’s. "That's where you're wrong. I don't even like Jane. I know what she's like. It was just... you know... a physical thing. Damn it, Peter, how do I say to you that I just wanted to go to bed with her and then forget she existed? But that's how it was!' he told her with sudden fierceness, and he could feel him willing him to believe him. "There was no emotion involved. I know you have to think that's disgusting but it's you that I love, you that I want to marry.

His pleading gaze met Peter’s. A knife twisted inside him, then. 'You have to know that that is impossible now,' he managed shakily.

'Look, let me tell you it all from the beginning—'

'No, I don't want to know! It's upsetting for both of us to drag this out. I couldn't ever forget...you see,' he said chokily, and then he remembered Tony and what he himself had done and spun away, too upset to say anything more.

The door clicked open. Tony lounged there, his densely lashed dark eyes, no shade of black in their depths, shooting to him with a burning anger that didn't show on his strong dark face but which Peter discovered that he could feel with every fibre of his shrinking body. The atmosphere vibrated and he registered in stricken bewilderment that that one scorching look from Tony had filled him with guilt. Tony was outraged to find him even talking to Brian.

I believe you've overstayed your welcome, sinmer,-Tony drawled chillingly. 'Don't come here again.'

Complete bewilderment flashed across Brian's face.

'Tony ...' Peter whispered in shock, for in that threatening gaze he recognised the kind of savage, territorial instincts which more properly belonged in the jungle, not in civilised society. He had the frightening suspicion that if Brian said one word out of line Tony would use it as an excuse to throw him down the lift shaft.

'What's going on here?' Brian asked, shaking his blond head. 'I don't understand...'

Tony strolled forward like a prowling panther and slid a fluid arm round Peter's rigid back. 'Peter and I are going for lunch. You're wasting your time,' he delivered very drily.

Brian's jaw dropped. 'Peter?'

Peter didn't know where to put himself. Tony took care of that problem too. He simply swept him out of the office, down the corridor and into the lift. Before the doors slid shut he had a perfect view of Gina's incredulous expression.

'Did you return the ring?' Tony enquired flatly.

Peter finally unglued his tongue from the roof of his shocked mouth. 'How dare you do that to me? How dare you speak to Brian like that?'

'How long was he in there with you?' Tony demanded. 'Evidently long enough to tell you a sob story!'

'It's none of your business how long I was with him.'

'You slept in my arms all last night. If that doesn't make it my business, what does?' he responded with devastating frankness. 'Dio... I'm sure you didn't tell him that.'

A tide of painful heat engulfed every inch of Peter's exposed body. Tony Stark had been put on earth purely to torment him, he thought in anguished disbelief. He steamrollered over every sensibility he possessed.

'I presume you did tell him that he was yesterday' news?' .....

His expectant silence sizzled.

'What does it matter to you whether I did or not?' Peter flung at him wildly.

'I don't share my omegas. It's an old Italian custom,' Tony returned with sardonic bite.

Peter stumbled out into the cool of the underground car park. 'I am not one of your omegas!'

He swung round. 'Then what are you?'

Peter eyes clashing with that coolly enquiring dark gaze, Peter went rigid, his breath catching in his throat. 'I'm in love with another man—'

'Who's already history.' Tony studied him with cool intent. 'A man you never even shared a bed with. What kind of love was that?'

"The kind of love I'm sure you couldn't understand!'

'Pure, perfect love,' Tony mocked. 'It had to be perfect for you, Peter...that was the most important part, wasn't it?' 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

He pressed him into the waiting limousine. "The white wedding, the virgin sacrifice. It's medieval. What were you going to do if you finally got into the marriage bed and found you didn't like what he did there?' 'Don't be disgusting!' Peter gasped. 'You'd have been a martyr. You'd have gritted your teeth and mentally flipped through a wallpaper book while the poor devil got on with it.' Outrage leapt through Peter. 'I refuse to listen to this.' 'You were shocked by your own response last night. ' 'No!' he gasped, jerking his brown head away, trembling with the force of his own jagged reactions. Emotions were all churning about on the surface—emotions he wasn't used to handling.

'And you weren't the only one shocked,' Tony breathed, his dark drawl fracturing. 'It never occurred to me that you could still be a virgin, and I would never have got into that bed with you had I known that. I'm not in the habit of taking advantage of untutored innocence.'

'I don't want to talk about it' Peter’s strained voice quivered. 'I don't even know what I'm doing here with you.'

'You wanted an escape from Brian,' Tony told him grimly. "That's why you're here.'

Dazedly he closed his eyes. He might as well have reached inside him and read a label. Was he so transparent? Until he'd said it he hadn't even appreciated why he had allowed Tony's arrogant intervention. It had been easier, less painful than prolonging an encounter which could only have gone round in ever more distressing circles. Had Jane been Brian's dream omega? A dream he had finally set aside? Had he knowingly settled for second best when he'd chosen Peter—someone who shared his interests, his outlook, bis goals, but still an omega as different from Jane as any omega could be? There had been nothing left to talk about with Brian.

'You don't even blame him, do you?' Tony murmured.

Peter searched himself, learnt that once again Tony could hit the target with disturbing accuracy. His anger had settled into sad acceptance. 'She's very beautiful, very tempting,' he said gruffly.

'She's a blue-eyed blonde with good teeth and long legs. There's a lot of them out there,' Tony returned dismissively.

Momentarily Peter was transfixed by such a description of his glamorous cousin. Then he reminded himself that on Tony's international scale of beautiful omegas Jane might well strike him as being not that special... only that did not explain—indeed it made all the more impossible to understand—why Tony should think a five-foot-one-inch brunette secretary worthy of such attention as he was receiving!

And then he understood why and was astonished that he had not solved the riddle sooner. Tony got bored so easily with omegas. Listening to Sam, wryly concealing his awareness of his helpless masculine envy, he had heard time and time again about just how eager omegas were to attract Tony Stark's attention. Peter's greatest attraction could only have been her lack of interest.

The omega’s apparent indifference had singled him out from the rest of the omega staff. He couldn't think of a single one who didn't go a little fluttery in Tony's presence. Even happily married, older omegas were aware of Tony's undeniable sexual charge... but Peter had blocked his awareness out, scornfully denying his own instinctively physical response to those spectacular dark good looks of his. Stubborn self-discipline had made it possible for him to close him out...until yesterday, when alcohol and shock had decimated his natural defenses.

Tony assisted him out of the car, the warmth of his hand on his arm making him shiver and stiffen. Peter wanted nothing more to do with him. He had to tell Tony that. Very possibly he felt grimly responsible for him after what had happened between them. After all, Peter had turned out to be far less sexually experienced than Tony had cynically assumed.

The stylish restaurant was disconcertingly empty. Peter blinked as he sank into the chair pulled out for him. A pianist was playing quietly in the corner. Waiters en masse engulfed them in the most expensive variety of silent service.

'Where is everyone?' he asked weakly. 'I wanted privacy for us to talk... and I didn't think you would wish to return to my house.'

He had paid for the privilege of an empty room for Peter’s benefit? He swallowed hard. A light first course was swiftly served. Tony lounged back with a glass of wine in one shapely hand and surveyed her with immense calm. 'Eat,' he encouraged him softly.

'Let's get the talking over with,' Peter suggested brittlely. A rueful smile curved his wide, sensual mouth. 'Sometimes you are very young, honey.'

'Just not used to this kind of treatment.' 'Very, very young,' Tony said wryly. 'And if you looked in the mirror without superimposing your cousin's standard of attractiveness you would see what I see. Perfect bone structure, eyes with the color and depth of honey, translucent skin, a wonderfully sultry mouth and a figure that would tempt a saint from celibacy... and I am no saint, amore mio.'

His mouth went dry, soft pink highlighting his cheekbones.

'When I look at you, I see a very lovely omega who walks, talks and behaves as if he's very plain and ordinary. That was what first drew my attention—that complete lack of self-awareness. You made me curious. I thought at first that it was an act, designed to actually attract attention...' As Peter stiffened he shifted a lithe hand, silencing him. 'Then I watched you look back at me and freeze and I knew that whatever you were you weren't indifferent.' 'If you're trying to say that I actually asked for—'

'If your wedding plans hadn't fallen through I would never have approached you,' Tony asserted softly. 'But no man who desires a omega ignores an opportunity when it comes his way. I didn't plan to take you to bed last night... it was too soon and, in the light of your inexperience, most ill judged, but I had no idea that I would be the first. Don't try to turn what we shared into a tawdry one-night stand. It wasn't, and what is more you know it wasn't.'

Peter dropped his head, forced against his volition to recall his lovemaking, a helpless curl of heat igniting in the pit of his stomach, making him pale and tauten in angry rejection of his body's weakness. 'But that doesn't change how I feel and think. We have different standards. What happened,' he framed tightly, 'shouldn't have happened.'

'But it did and there's no going back.'

'Maybe there wouldn't be if I fancied myself in love with you or something like that.' Peter skin warmed, his generous mouth tightening. 'But I don't!'

'Love!' Tony repeated with audible exasperation.

'Obviously not something that comes into your affairs and probably never has done!' The omega had forced himself to be as honest as he could be. A sexual relationship without any deeper feelings was not for him. He might have leapt out of the frying-pan into the fire last night but he had enough strength of will to admit his own error and still stand his ground. Tony vented a curiously chilling laugh, his dark eyes as hard as gemstones as he gazed back at him. 'Oh, I've been in love, Peter... a lot more deeply in love than I suspect you have ever been. I was nineteen. She was ten years older and a beta. It lasted two fantastic years and then one morning I woke up and she wasn't there anymore. I spent six months trying to find her and at the end of that six months I would still have given every penny I possessed to have her back... Now that is love.'

Peter was shaken by the confession. For a split second he found himself envisaging Tony as the adoring, very vulnerable satellite of an older woman, but his imagination could not hold that image for long. At thirty-four there was nothing of the boy left in Tony. He was an overwhelmingly self-assured adult male alpha. 'Why did she leave?' he heard herself ask, unable to stifle a flare of natural curiosity.

'She convinced herself that she was wrong for me.' Tony shrugged a broad shoulder, his mobile mouth twisting. 'But she also helped me to free myself from any illusions about love. Take a degree of mutual respect and liking and add in sexual attraction and you have a far more secure basis than you'll ever find with love.'

'I don't believe that.'

'Yet you had your illusions smashed only yesterday,' Tony reminded him with velvet-smooth cruelty. 'You took him for granted. You instinctively trusted him not to betray you. You built a whole rack of unreal expectations on the basis of the belief that love conquers all. Now, if you hadn't been in love, you wouldn't have made such sweeping assumptions and you wouldn't have felt so safe that you were blind to the signs that his attention was straying.'

"There may be a certain amount of truth in that but I would still say that for most people the benefits of loving and being loved more than outweigh the risks.'

"The feel-good factor,' Tony slotted in with satire. 'But whether you like it or not we both felt very good last night... and love had nothing whatsoever to do with it.'

Peter reddened furiously, loathing and helplessly resenting the way he kept on backing him into corners and arguing with him. Brian and he had almost never argued. Peter had seen that as a symbol of the strength of their relationship, a sign that they were wonderfully well matched. No doubt another one of the illusions of love which Tony had so coolly delineated.

'Emotionally cold and detached,' Pete had said. For the first time he really saw that aspect of Tony, and it sent a cold tingle down his spine as he contrasted that cool intellect with the apparent warmth and undeniable physical passion that he had shown him yesterday. No, he wouldn't like to be the fool who fell in love with Tony Stark. The warmth could only have been an illusion, aimed to impress and reassure.

'Last night was last night—time out of time if you want to call it that,' Peter breathed. 'But I won't have an affair with you and I won't be your mistress either.'

'Why not?' Tony said lazily. His control snapped. 'Because we have nothing in common. Because we live in different worlds with different values—'

'But not because you're not interested.'

Silently fuming, Peter settled back into the limousine. 'Will you allow me to work out my notice without harassment of any kind?' 'Breakfast... was harassment?'

Peter bit his lower lip and tasted blood. 'You know what I mean..."

'Is what people might think so important to you that you would allow it to rule your life?'

'That's not fair!'

Tony reached for his clenched fingers where they rested on the seat. Momentarily he attempted to draw back from the contact and then, for a reason he could not begin to comprehend, his fingers stayed where they were, curled within his larger hand. The omega trembled; he didn't know what was happening to him. He had a sudden, terrifying urge to throw himself on Tony and sob his heart out. In all his life he had never felt more confused. Tony drew him relentlessly closer. 'Tony... no...' he whispered pleadingly.

But Tony didn't listen. He twined lean fingers into his fall of hair, tugging him round to face him. His eyes burned as he met Tony’s eyes and every tiny muscle tensed. Peter’s pulsebeat thumped at the foot of his throat, a terrible excitement rising inside him no matter how hard he fought to suppress it. 'No...' Peter said again, as much for his own benefit as for Tony’s.

But an aching, compulsive wanting held him still. In dazed silence he recognized the shocking strength of promptings entirely new to his experience. Tony lowered his dark head and took Peter’s mouth with hungry urgency. Fire in the hold, he thought wildly, madly, feeling the instantaneous charge of his own helpless response. Peter wanted to grip him, hold him, mesh with every hard, muscular angle of his lean, virile length. The scent of him, the touch of him inflamed the omega senses with a drowning passion that was utterly self-absorbed. Tiny little sounds escaped his throat. Hot, electrifying pleasure engulfed him with every thrust of Tony’s tongue.

Peter’s fingers slid with shameless hunger beneath his silk shirt, skimming luxuriantly over skin as smooth as velvet, feeling the taut contraction of his sleek muscles as he jerked and groaned beneath Peter’s exploration. Tony swept him up and pulled him down on top of him, expert hands gliding up the quivering stretch of his thighs, hitching up his confining skirt and then bringing him down again, sealing him into raw contact with the hard, throbbing length straining against his zip.

Shuddering, Tony released his swollen mouth, eyes of smouldering black blazing over Peter’s rapt face. 'Come home with me... lie in bed with me... forget everything else,' he breathed raggedly.

In that split second the passenger door beside him sprung open with a thick clunk. Peter focused dazedly on his chauffeur's mirror-shiny shoes standing on the pavement and then he leapt off Tony with an agility and speed that a mountain goat would have envied, almost falling out of the limousine in his desperate haste to vacate it. Tony grated out something, called Peter’s name, but Peter kept on walking, right on past the clutch of Stark employees who were still staring open-mouthed and incredulous at what they had witnessed.

'Sam...' he said ten minutes later when he had tracked him down, 'I'm afraid I'm about to leave you in the lurch. I think it's time I went home.'


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

'HEAVEN knows, Brian's entitled to an explanation. “You've behaved disgracefully!' Janice Dalton railed in angry condemnation. "The whole village is talking...and how do you think the Shorters feel about all this? They treated you like a son!'

'I'm sorry,' Peter whispered shakily.'

'You lied to me. You told me that you and Brian had decided that you couldn't get married; you didn't have the decency to tell me or him that there was another man involved!'

Say nothing, don't argue and the sooner it will blow over. But after three solid days of recriminations following the publication of that wretched photo of him with Tony that belief was beginning to wear more than a little thin. It had not occurred to Peter when he'd decided to leave London and come home that he might find himself cast as the guilty partner. Brian was playing the martyr, the innocent... letting him take all the flak.

'Give it a rest, Ma.' Jane appeared in the kitchen doorway, wearing her sunniest and most generous smile. 'At least the wedding invitations weren't in the post.'

'I'll bring the washing in.' Peter headed for the back door with alacrity.

When he hit the fresh air, she drank in deeply.

'Blood will out, it seems...' His aunt's strained voice carried out through the window. 'But nobody could have been more careful than I was raising Peter...'

Peter moved out of earshot and began to take the washing off the line. It was a beautiful May day and he couldn't even appreciate it. He felt like a rat in a trap. The nightmare just seemed to go on and on. Jane had driven down from London only an hour ago, perfectly groomed, blonde mane fresh from the hairdresser's, not a frazzled nerve in sight. His cousin simply took it for granted that Peter would not dare to reveal the fact that he had found her in bed with Brian.

But then two wrongs did not make a right. Brian and Jane's betrayal did not justify his own behaviour with Tony Stark. But he wasn't trying to excuse himself any more. One misjudged night would not bring his world to an end. What tormented him was the bitter knowledge that Tony's intrusion on the scene had turned what would have been a simple broken engagement into a positive disaster. His aunt and uncle were outraged by the belief that he had deceived Brian and then dumped him in apparent pursuit of a rich tycoon. That the aforementioned rich tycoon had then seemingly abandoned him was his aunt's sole consolation. Janice Dalton liked to see bad behaviour rewarded by just desserts.  
Tony... he tensed, a ground swell of uneasy confusion engulfing Peter. Sometimes running away was the only way to protect yourself. He did not regret walking out of Stark Industries that same day. It had been the only possible solution. He had made an absolute ass of himself and that had hit her pride hard, but nobody had ever died from reaping a salutary lesson in common sense.

He couldn't handle Tony Stark. He couldn't handle a passion that smashed every safe boundary that he had ever observed. Tony had viewed him as an entertaining challenge. Tony had made him a target, amused by the unfamiliar cut and thrust of actually having to try and talk an omega into continuing to share his bed. But ultimately Tony had simply played the one winning card he did have... Peter’s undeniable desire for him.

It still appalled Peter that one rogue alpha male could wreak that much havoc. Everything he'd thought he knew about himself had been ripped apart and put together again in a new arrangement that felt entirely alien...and all within the space of twenty-four hours. Little wonder that he had been guilty of such serious misjudgement; little wonder that he had been in turmoil, at the mercy of a seething sexual attraction which had betrayed him when he'd been desperate enough to seek any form of comfort.

'I knew you wouldn't tell tales...'

Peter spun from the low wall that separated the rambling garden from the fields. Jane was standing a few feet away.

'Only because I didn't see that it would achieve anything but more distress all round.' Peter tilted his chin.

Jane uttered a sharp little laugh. 'Brian won't even speak to me. He still thinks I made that phone call.'

'Of course you did,' Peter said drily, not having wasted one ounce of mental energy on that minor point.

'I didn't!' her cousin launched back at her furiously. 'I didn't make that call! Someone who knew about Brian and me obviously decided it would be fun to drop us in it! Maybe someone he works with, someone who saw us out together. I don't know... but it wasn't me!'

Peter didn't care who had made that call to the office. But he was grimly amused by his cousin's vociferous self-defence. Guilty of sleeping with Brian and guilty of complete absence of remorse, but not guilty of making that phone call.

'So tell me the true story about Tony Stark,' Jane demanded. 'Why?'

'I could do with a laugh to lighten my day,' Jane derided. 'Ma has to be out of her mind to imagine that Tony would look at you twice, never mind take you home for the night! Tony Stark wouldn't even give me the time of day the one time I met him. Why do you think I settled for Marco? I bet the most intimate thing you ever did for Tony Stark was take dictation over breakfast!'

Peter turned back to the wall and braced her hands on the worn stone. He thought of all the years that he had wasted trying to make a friend of Jane, wondered now why he had bothered when he had been beaten from the outset. Jane had never forgiven him for depriving her of her cherished only-child status in her family home. Even though his cousin had effortlessly continued to bask in the limelight constantly shone on her by her besotted parents, Peter had remained a bitterly resented intruder.

When Peter had begun dating Brian, the pairing had been popular with both families. Brian's mother loathed Jane, had been seriously worried when her son had shown an interest in her, and had been seriously relieved when, after a decent interval, he'd switched his interest to Peter instead. As for his uncle and aunt... they liked Brian but would have been very disappointed had their beautiful daughter settled for him. They expected Jane to marry into wealth and status.

That Peter should get married first had rather astonished the Daltons. But his aunt had thoroughly enjoyed all the fuss of the wedding arrangements and over the past year Peter had grown closer to her than ever before. It hurt now to see that stronger bond broken and at such a cost to everyone concerned. Only Jane, self-centred as ever, stood clear of the fallout. But then Jane never took responsibility for anything she did.

'Why did you do it?' Peter asked now, not really expecting a response. 'Brian doesn't love you, he loves me... he just hasn't, got the guts to admit it!' Jane snapped, suddenly on the defensive.

Peter slowly turned, a frown of surprise etched between his brows. 'His mother hates me. She thinks I'm a tart. Brian does too... Why do you think he went for you? He wants me but he doesn't want me, so he played safe!'

Recognising the bitter resentment in Jane's eyes, Peter was shaken. Ironically it had not occurred to him that his cousin might actually care about Brian. He had assumed that the entire episode had been yet another demonstration of Jane's helpless need to smash anything which he himself valued. An act of spite and superiority.

'But there's only one thing I want to talk about,' Jane continued angrily. 'Brian's acting like an idiot, chasing after you, refusing to have anything to do with me...but that's only because he's feeling guilty. Let him off the hook. Tell him you understand and that you accept that your engagement is over. I don't want him to feel trapped with me.'

'Trapped?' Peter echoed, not following.

Jane looked unconvincingly coy and then shrugged a slim shoulder with quite unhidden self-satisfaction. 'I think I may be pregnant...'

'I think I may be pregnant...' It was like a body-blow to Peter. He went white. In an instant he learnt that his pain was not yet at an end. He had faced up squarely to their betrayal... but still the concept of Jane pregnant with Brian's child could only make him feel sick. He had expected to have Brian's child.

'And I'm not telling him until he's stopped this stupid guilt trip about you!'

'I might as well have told tales...' Peter mumbled.

'No!' Jane told him sharply. "There's no reason for anyone to know when I got caught. You take yourself off back to London. I will be seen consoling Brian and then we'll go abroad and get hitched on a beach somewhere without any fuss. Everyone will think we were madly impulsive but I doubt if they'll suspect it was a shotgun do!'

'You have it all worked out.' No humiliation for Jane.

'Brian was mine,' his cousin said with flat emphasis. 'And I can't say sorry when I don't feel sorry. Just you make sure you tell him I didn't make that phone call.'

A hysterical laugh clogged Peter's throat. Jane didn't only expect him to take the heat for her, she also expected him to intercede on her behalf with Brian. So his cousin wasn't as sure of Brian as she wanted to be. But then why else would she be pregnant? That, given Jane's experience, was unlikely to be an accident. Dear Lord, for how long had they been meeting behind Peter’s back?

In the kitchen Janice Dalton was fussing frantically over a tea-tray. 'Brian and his parents have come over!' she said, tight-mouthed. 'What are your uncle and I supposed to say to them?'

Peter almost laughed but he was afraid that if he did he wouldn't be able to stop. Brian here? And with his parents in tow? He had already heard all about how shocked and furious the Shorters were. Everyone was jumping on the same bandwagon. In the Dark Ages he'd have been dragged out to the village common and burnt as a witch for the sin of having offended so many people. Be careful of what you wish for in case you get it... Last week he had passionately hated his dull, 'nice boy' image; this week he would have given ten years of his life to have his reputation back, to be able to walk down the village street again without nudges, turned backs and coldly disapproving stares. Notoriety wasn't fun, not in a small, close-knit community where so many people reserved the right to stand in moral judgement.

The doorbell shrilled. Halfway down the polished hall he was intercepted by Brian as he emerged from the lounge. 'Peter... I had to see you. We have to sort this out.'

'Tell them the truth!' he gasped, incredulous at his persistence and attempting to drag his arm free of his hold.

'Why did you tell your aunt we were finished? Why the blazes did you have to get caught in that stupid photo with Tony Stark?' Brian demanded resentfully. 'Don't you realise what an idiot that's made me look? I know there's nothing going on between you and Stark...there couldn't be...but it's made things even more complicated.'

The doorbell went again as if someone had a finger welded to the button. The piercing noise ground along him already jagged nerve-endings like a knife being sharpened.

'Let go of me,' Peter pleaded in despair, his voice shaking.

'I love you and I still want to marry you... If we don't talk, how are we going to work this out?'

Peter couldn't bear to listen to him. It was as if Brian was living in some fantasy world of his own. Peter tore himself free of his grasp with such force that he almost crashed against the front door. He hauled it open, his strained face a mask of desperation.

It was Tony. The shock of it rocked him back on his heels. But he experienced a flood of relief so powerful that it left him dizzy. He swayed, his head swimming. Strong arms reached out and caught him before his knees could buckle beneath him.

'What the hell has been going on here?' Tony demanded chillingly. 'Tony...' Peter whispered as he leant up against him, entirely supported by his superior strength and so grateful for his presence that he felt weak. 'Get me out of here... please!'

'Take your hands off him!' Brian raked at him after an astounded pause. Tony ignored him. Swinging on his heel, he walked Peter out to a black Bugatti sports car, calmly slotted him into the passenger seat and murmured softly, 'I'll be back in a minute, amore.'

Peter snatched in an unsteady breath. Who do you think Tony is—some white knight riding gallantly to your rescue? a little voice asked drily. He shut the voice off. All he knew was that he had never been so glad to see anyone. At that moment it was more than enough.

He watched Tony emerge from the house again, couldn't even summon up the curiosity to wonder why he had gone back in. His black hair was ruffled by the breeze but so perfectly cut that it fell straight back into place. Dark eyes mirrored the sunlight—flashing gold against the hard symmetry of his masculine features. He looked quite extravagantly gorgeous in a pearl- grey suit that was very Italian in style. The overall effect was one of quite breathtaking elegance and sophistication. Who was Peter? he found himself wondering helplessly. Who was the omega who had walked away when Tony had laid his heart at his feet?

He swung in beside Peter. 'You have some preference about where you would like to go?'

'Anywhere...'

He laughed spontaneously. 'Dio, I timed my arrival well. I also have plans of my own...'

That was scarcely a revelation. Tony would always know exactly where he was going and what he was doing.; Unlike Brian...Brian, who Peter had once fondly believed to be strong, decisive and forthright, he reflected painfully. Right now Brian seemed lost in a turmoil of his own making, and he had been loyal to neither Peter nor Jane. Had Brian come to him that day in his office and told him that he loved her cousin, he would have respected him more and understood him better.

'You've lost weight,' Tony remarked casually. 

'Scarlet omegas do.'

'You get much thinner and you'll slide through a grating. There wasn't a lot of you to begin with.'

Was Peter getting too thin? He glanced down anxiously at the slender curves filling out his pink cotton T-shirt and jeans, and for some reason also recalled that he had no makeup on. His cheeks flushed. For goodness' sake! It wasn't as if he was out on a hot date! 'Why did you come down?' he asked.

'I missed you?' 'Try again.'

'I was a little worried about the effect of all the publicity?'

"The little-office-omega-makes-good bit... or the Tony-Stark-goes-down- market bit?'

'If being with you is slumming, there's not an office omega in the City safe.' Tony casually tossed a newspaper onto his lap. 'Have you seen the latest?'

Peter stiffened. 'I thought I'd had my fifteen minutes of fame.'

With a sinking heart, he read the gossip column. Tasmin Laslo was reportedly furious to learn that he had been replaced by an omega she described as 'an impertinent little typist', and the actress had gone on to share the news that the same typist had called his employer 'a slick, swine'.

'I said it,' Peter whispered sickly. 'I said it that day when she phoned... that she was well rid of you.'

'Honesty got the better of you?'

'You have every right to be angry with me,' Peter conceded tautly.

'It was a fair assessment of my character to date. I don't give a damn, but if I know Tasmin she'll find a way to make this story run and run.'

Yet even in receipt of that daunting assurance Peter could feel a sense of calm stealing over him for the first time in days. It was the most incredible relief to escape the hothouse pressure and angry tensions of the Dalton household.

'Jane's pregnant.' It leapt straight out of his subconscious onto his tongue.

Tony burst out laughing. Peter dealt him a stunned look.

'Sorry, amore. That was not very kind of me... but it does cross one's mind that, whatever else she is, she's a remarkably determined young woman.'

'Brian doesn't know yet. Of course, when he does... he'll leave me alone.'

'Is that what you want?'

'Yes... absolutely,' Peter returned, fiercely defensive on that point.

'I suspect the heat is already off you,' Tony delivered smoothly. 'When I went back into the house, I told them.'

His seat belt pulled tight as Peter's back jerked blade-straight. 'Told them what?'

'I only wanted to make myself known to your family. Under fire, you surely did not expect me to pose: alongside you as a martyred miscreant?'

Peter's jaw dropped as he gazed back at him wide-eyed. 'What did you tell them?'

'I merely pointed out that our relationship only began after you discovered that your fiance and your cousin had been seeing each other behind your back. I was far kinder to them than they were to you,' Tony imparted, quite untouched by his consternation. 'I did not refer to the fact that you found them between the sheets. I find it quite impossible to comprehend why you should have felt the need to protect them in the face of the kind of treatment you have obviously been receiving.' 'It'll devastate my aunt and uncle—'

'Let them be devastated. She is their daughter and you are not her keeper.'

'You had no right to tell them!' Peter gasped.

'In the light of what I overheard before I entered the room, I enjoyed telling them. Your cousin staged a most unconvincing faint. Your ex put on a fetching impression of a trout on a hook. And then, as I was withdrawing to leave them all to it, the rather large blonde woman in the pearls made a decidedly offensive remark about your cousin's morals... something which rankled so severely that your cousin literally couldn't take it lying down.' Tony's accented drawl trembled with betraying amusement. 'She came up out of her faint like a vampire rising from the tomb and began screeching at the top pf her voice!'

'Quite priceless entertainment, I gather?' But Peter's own voice had developed an involuntary wobble; He was genuinely shocked by Tony's sublime indifference to the feelings of everyone concerned but the picture that he had drawn was so vivid, so innately rich with black comedy that he couldn't help the ripple of amusement which briefly gripped him.

'You see, honey... you can laugh and smile again,' Tony murmured with satisfaction.

'Even when I hate myself for it? Even when I have no right to feel superior to Brian and Jane?' he muttered feverishly. 'The same day... I slept with you.'

'But you would never have done that had you still considered yourself morally bound to him. You're too loyal. Nor can I believe that you would have practised such deceit as they did.'

'You could talk me right out of my conscience,' Peter whispered.

'It might be an improvement if you stopped behaving like a schoolboy fresh out of a convent. Nobody's perfect,' Tony reminded him, taking some of the sting out of that initial statement.

'I owe Jane's parents a great deal. If they hadn't given me a home when I was five, I would have gone into care. They took me in and brought me up just as if I was their own child.'

'Liar. I saw a dozen photos of her decorating the room, none whatsoever of you. They are comfortably off yet you left school at sixteen and made your own way in life.

''My choice. You couldn't have expected them to do more. My aunt didn't even particularly want to take me on. I'm illegitimate,' Peter pointed out stiffly. 'Not so uncommon these days.' 'My father was a Greek waiter.'

'Rich, warm Mediterranean blood… do I apologise for mine?' Tony elevated an ebony brow with decided hauteur.

Peter was betrayed into a rueful laugh. 'I wasn't apologising—' 'You were. How did your parents meet?'

'My mother was on holiday. She was only out there a week. She was twenty-one,' Peter told him. 'Nobody wanted her to keep me but she did.   
So they told her she could manage on her own... It's fair enough that they weren't exactly over the moon when I landed back on their doorstep.   
My grandparents were too old to take me on. Jane was only a year older. My aunt and uncle stepped in. They didn't have to.'

Tony made no comment. Peter rested his head back, the tension draining out of him, his limbs slowly sinking into relaxation. 'As usual I'm not asking where we're going.'

'You don't really care.'

His skin reddened. 'No...I'm just grateful for break.' 'I don't want gratitude, amore.'

An odd chill ran down his spine. As he watched the countryside flying by he never forgot for one moment that he was sitting beside Tony Stark.   
Peter’s awareness of him was so intense that he couldn't hide from it. The frozen front that he had once contrived to put up in his presence was now quite impossible to maintain.

'We're almost there.' Tony swung off the road and drove down a long, tree-lined lane past a Gothic gatehouse.

'Where is "there"?' he tested a smile, found it was not so difficult as he had imagined it would be.

'Ladymead Hall. It's on the market and I have an appointment to view it.'

'You want a house in the country?'

'A base within easy reach of London.' Tony brought the powerful car to an abrupt halt before it hit a string of potholes. There was already a Mercedes parked ahead of them.

Peter gazed out at the mellowed brick frontage of the Elizabethan manor house. Interest flickered and then slowly flamed. He climbed out. Sunlight glinted off the mullioned windows, several of which were boarded up. The ancient building had the same sad air of neglect as the overgrown grounds.

'Do you want me to wait in the car?' Peter asked abruptly across the bonnet.

'Of course not.' Tony strolled forward to greet the suavely suited estate agent, but Peter changed course and walked over to the entrance, not wishing to intrude.

'We'll explore alone.' Rejoining him, Tony planted a glossy brochure carelessly in his hand. 'You can give me the omega viewpoint.'

The interior was better preserved than the exterior had suggested. The great hall had a massive stone fireplace and a wonderful flagstone floor.   
From room to room Peter wandered silently by Tony's side, his rapt face taking in the intact linenfold panelling, the elaborate if filthy plasterwork on the ceilings. The kitchen still rejoiced in massive built-in dressers. He pictured an Aga...a green one...in the fireplace. No, not there—that old black range ought to be cleaned up and preserved, he decided. The Aga would have to go at the other end.

A mouse ran over his foot; he didn't notice it. He roamed industriously through the maze of little dirty rooms which ran off the kitchen, mentally labelling them—logs, laundry, cloakroom, boiler room, junk— and frowned in intense concentration when he ran out of labels. Peter climbed the lavishly carved oak staircase, his fingers lingering here and there on the elaborate exuberance of the Jacobean ornamentation. Not a single word passed his lips.

Finally, at the head of the long gallery, sunlight beaming in from the windows in diamond patterns, dust motes dancing in the air, Peter uttered a dreamy sigh of enchantment and then endeavored to be rationally judgmental for Tony's benefit. 'It's a very large house.'

'Do you think so? I thought it was rather modest,' Tony admitted softly.

Peter gazed out of a tall window and another smile curved his generous mouth. 'There's a topiary garden down there. I wonder if it could be saved? I suppose there once would have been a herb garden too.'

'An enormous amount of renovation would be required.'

Peter's head spun round, dismayed green eyes flying to him. 'You surely wouldn't let that put you off?'

'I have to confess that I would prefer to buy after someone else had done the dirty work.'

Peter thought of Tony’s immaculate Georgian house in London, the cool, contemporary decor of the few rooms that he had glimpsed, and nodded in rueful understanding.

'But I can see this as a family house... as a home,' Tony said, his accent feathering almost seductively over the syllables.

'Yes,' Peter sighed, thinking, Definitely not down Tony's street. 'Marry me and make it that..."

Peter’s lashes flew up on stunned honey-like eyes, his breath tripping in his throat. He stared back at Tony in a daze of disbelief.

'I want a wife, and...eventually...children.' Tony selected the last word with the same utterly complete calm. 'I also want you. We both appear to want the same things at this stage in our lives. Why should we not seek them together?'

The tip of Peter’s tongue stole out to moisten his full lower lip. His mind was a total blank, and then he met Tony's dark golden gaze and the electrifying effect scorched along every nerve-ending, igniting a sudden surge of color in his cheeks. He trembled, shattered by the immediacy of a response over which he had absolutely no control.

He took a prowling step closer. 'We already have the passion without which no marriage of convenience could hope to prosper. You want me, amore mio... do not be ashamed to admit that.'

'I can't believe that you want to get married—'

'I'm thirty-four, Peter...and I openly confess to having enjoyed my freedom for many years. However, omegas are not the only ones who get the urge to settle down with one partner.'

'I know but—'

'A practical marriage and a civilised relationship—that is what I am offering you. Where there is no strong emotion there will be no pain either,'   
Tony pointed out, his night-dark eyes skimming over her troubled face. 'In short, I will not hurt you, Peter.'

Tony didn't want a wife who was madly in love with him. He didn't want to become the focus of emotions that he had no intention of returning.   
That made a cold kind of sense to him. Omegas in love could be very demanding creatures. A omega in love with an alpha who did not love them might easily become jealous, possessive and insecure if the inequality within the relationship began to threaten their self-respect.

'Why me...for heavens' sake?' Peter murmured not quite steadily. 'You hardly know me.'

'I beg to differ. You have worked for me for a year. I know you to be cool under pressure, efficient, something of a perfectionist and an excellent organiser. You are more likely to be early for an appointment than late. You are respected and liked by your subordinates but regarded as rather reserved because you never participate in the office gossip.'

Peter was blushing fierily. 'I do hope you'll put all that in a reference for when I go job-hunting again. I sound like a model employee.'

'You were, but you were never ambitious in the career stakes.'

Peter turned away, his lower limbs feeling as if they were stuffed with cotton wool. 'No,' he conceded wryly.

'Which also suits my purposes. I travel a great deal. A wife with a demanding career of his own would have little time to spare for home and family in my absence.'

'Home and family'? Damn him, damn him, damn him for the calculating, coolly assured character assessor that he was! Tony knew what Peter had so lately lost, could only be aware of the strength of the lure that he was casting out to him when Peter was facing a wretchedly uncertain future, bereft of everything that he had expected to be his.

'And, if you will forgive me for making the point, I believe I have also seen you at your worst.'

His narrow back went rigid. 'Falling-down drunk and desperate?'

'You were still strong, still worthy of my respect... you threw no tantrums, wallowed in no self-pity and indulged in no vindictive outbursts. You behaved with remarkable self-restraint. I admired that.'

He had to be a lethal poker player. Peter had an insane image of himself going down on his knees and kissing his feet in gratitude for such assurances. But Tony had treated Peter with respect, consideration and understanding, without any overtones of superiority or pity. All those things Tony had given him and he had taken, not even truly valuing what he was receiving at the time.

Yet Brian, whom he had loved and trusted and believed in, had almost destroyed him. Brian... still talking about reconciliation with the arrogant and distasteful conviction that no matter what he had done he would ultimately forgive him. Brian, coolly disparaging his worth with his incredulity that a male of Tony's wealth and importance could find him deserving of interest. Peter had never seen that conceit and egotism in Brian until now. There was a savage irony in making a comparison between two such radically different men, one whom he had adoringly placed on a pedestal and endowed with every conceivable virtue, the other whom he had disliked and misjudged and distrusted. He was ashamed of that now—ashamed that his gauche unease in Tony's disturbingly physical presence had led Peter into such unjustifiable prejudice.

'Tony... I can't deny that you're tempting me... but I don't think that I'm in a state of mind right now to be dealing with such a major decision,'   
Peter returned unsteadily, his eyes unguarded and anxious.

'No doubt you feel that you don't know me well enough.'

'I know you well enough, Tony,' Peter said a little shyly, reflecting that while he had been at his worst Tony had been at his best. 'And the one thing this mess with Brian has taught me is that even though I've known him almost all my life I didn't really know him at all when the chips were down. I didn't suspect that he was still attracted to Jane and I didn't once notice anything odd in his behaviour, but then, as you said, love makes you take people for granted, gives you a false, rosy picture and too many high-flown ideas. Was it like that for you— I mean with...?

''Elissa? Naturally. At that age I was a great romantic. But the pain fades... I can assure you of that,' he replied very drily.

Elissa—lovely name, Peter thought abstractedly as he gazed at Tony's chiselled golden profile. He was so very, very good-looking that even at a time like this, when it was so important that he should not be distracted, he was.

'You're a very rich man,' Peter pointed out in some embarrassment. 'There must be loads of omegas... you know... who would be much more suitable than me..." Tony dealt him a cynically amused smile. 'But you are very special, amore. My embarrassment of riches did not tempt you an inch away from your moral standards last week. I liked that too. I would not like to be married solely on the basis of what I can deliver materially.'

It crossed his mind that Tony believed he had Peter so well taped that he would provide him with no unwelcome surprises. Perhaps all that he had despised in himself a mere week ago was ironically Tony's standard of what his wife should be. An old-fashioned home-' maker with traditional values, highly unlikely to take off with the chauffeur one day, or announce that pregnancy might ruin his figure, or make spoilt-rich-boy demands! on a male who was very much accustomed to having everything go his way.

'I don't know what to say...'

'You say yes.' Tony stretched out his hands and he reached for them, helplessly revelling in the warmth of physical contact. 'It would be crazy.'

'If you think that, my talents as a negotiator must be failing.'

Tony was a brilliant negotiator, pulling off the kind of stunning deals which made his competitors howl in anguish. But to negotiate a marriage proposal seemed so...so cold. Hurriedly he squashed the suspicion. There was nothing cold about the male arms relentlessly tugging him closer, nothing cold about utilising intelligence and cool, calm forethought in so important a field as choosing a life partner, he told herself.

'I can't think straight...'

He laughed softly, dark eyes flashing gold with innate male satisfaction. He knew why he was in such a condition, knew that he could draw Peter, unresisting and quivering, into contact with every hard, muscular line of his length and extract a response that he had not yet learned to control.

With a shapely hand he stroked a silky strand of brown hair back from his brow. His heartbeat was racing like crazy. 'I also like the fact that I excite you...' Tony purred.

A flush of horribly self-conscious heat marked out his slanted cheekbones as he glanced down at the thrusting evidence of Peter’s stiffened nipples poking through the cotton jersey. 'Don't be shy,' Tony reproved him, leaning him back against the wall, sliding his hands below the T-shirt to skim caressingly up over the smooth skin of his taut ribcage.

Peter stopped breathing, held still by the smoulder of his dark eyes. With breathtaking cool, he open the shirt out of his path. His nipples sprang full into his shaping hands. Sensation fired a bitter-sweet ache between his legs. Peter trembled. Tony’s thumbs grazed the achingly sensitive buds and he moaned and jerked, looking down at his wantonly bare flesh in mingled disbelief and excitement.

Tony’s dark head lowered. He ran the tip of his tongue along Peter’s full lower lip and then, with innately erotic precision, intruded sexily into the moist interior already invitingly opened to him. A stifled moan was torn from him, his hands rising of their own volition and clutching at Tony’s shoulders to prevent Peter sliding down the wall in an inelegant heap of shuddering responsiveness.

'If you don't become my wife, I'll make you my mistress,' Tony warned softly. 'I am not going to go away, not about to politely withdraw in gentlemanly defeat.' He straightened, expertly replaced his disarranged clothing. Peter was shaking but not so controlled by the dissastisfied ache of his shamefully willing body that he was deaf to the message he wanted him to receive. Angry humiliation leapt up in place of passion.   
He stepped back and flung him a look of warning. 'If you ever do that to me again, Tony, I'll slap your face—hard! I am not some brainless little toy you can play with and I'm not a wind-up doll either. I will not be controlled or manipulated by you!' 'But you will marry me.'

The conviction with which he made that assurance threw Peter even further off balance.

'I... I need to think about it,' he muttered unevenly.

'Back in that madhouse? How could you think there? I want an answer now,' Tony declared. 'Yes or no will suffice... for this round.'

Peter wrenched his eyes from Tony, struggled to rise above the quite startling temptation to tell him to take his proposal and jump off a cliff. His brain told him that he was too emotionally charged up right now to make a level-headed decision but every other natural prompting urged blind, immediate acceptance.

Tony was offering him everything that he had ever wanted on terms that he could fulfil, and on one level there was a part of him, which he tried and failed to overcome, that was helplessly, deeply influenced by the knowledge that Tony wanted him and valued him. That awareness was balm to his salvaged ego and Tony was offering him an unbelievably welcome escape from a situation that was threatening to become quite intolerable.

'Yes.' The instant he said it he almost retracted it again, but then he thought of how it would feel to stand on the sidelines while Jane married Brian. He would be an object of pity, the spectre at the feast, the onlooker who embarrassed everyone. In one small family there was no room for the rejected bride and her replacement. Why put himself through such humiliation? Nobody could possibly feel sorry for Tony Stark's chosen wife... could they?


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

'ITS a magnificent gown. Of course we couldn't have afforded anything this elaborate,' Janice Dalton remarked stiffly. 'I expect with the number of important people coming Tony wanted you to look really special. But your uncle and I will feel total frauds sitting at the top table. We haven't done a thing to help... But then it's all been done in such a frantic rush...'

Peter sent the older woman a veiled glance, troubled by her constrained manner. Tony's revelation about Jane and Brian had shattered his aunt. Both the Daltons had been very upset by their daughter's behavior. Brian and Jane's deceit had been a bitter pill to swallow, unsweetened by Jane's refusal to express the slightest regret.

'Peter... it's still not too late to change your mind,' his aunt muttered tightly.

The wedding was a mere two hours away. Peter almost laughed at the idea. 'I don't want to change my mind.'

'Tony is very rich and very handsome,' the older woman added with a rather peevish edge to her delivery. 'But he's also a rather overwhelming personality. Naturally, I want you to be happy... but are you really sure you're making the right decision?'

'I want to marry Tony.' That belief had buoyed Peter up over every day of the past month. It was like a rock that he clung to when the winds of change threatened to howl around him. As long as he had focused on Tony, his future home and his approaching wedding, he had been able to sit safe inside a neat little emotional cocoon. Brian and Jane had gone back to London. He had seen neither of them since that day when Tony had swept him off in the Bugatti to Ladymead. Both his cousin and his ex-fiance had found retreat from family recriminations the most comfortable option.

Ladymead... An abstracted smile curved Peter's lips

Tony had bought Peter’s dream house. He had sent him back to the car with the satirical assurance that he didn't want the estate agent to catch one glimpse of his enchanted face. 'Do you know if there's anybody else interested?' he had pressed anxiously.

'There is precious little that I desire that I cannot buy.' For an instant, assailed by the dryness of that tone and the sudden coolness of those brilliant dark eyes, Peter had experienced the most peculiar inner chill.

He shook off the memory, choosing to recall instead his aunt and uncle's shaken response to Tony's announcement that same evening that they were getting married as soon as it could be arranged. 'A rather over whelming personality'... Yes, the Daltons had been so overpowered by Tony that they hadn't uttered a word of protest, had indeed struggled valiantly to conceal their astonishment, but there had also been perceptible relief in their reaction. If Peter had found another groom, nobody needed to feel quite so bad.

Tony had assured them that he would handle all the arrangements. And he had... or his staff had. Peter hadn't had an input either and hadn't wanted one. He had spent the past year up to his throat and revelling in all the endless tiny details of bridal fervor. This time he was grateful not to be involved, not to be reminded of that other wedding which would now never take place. Tony had been supremely tactful, he thought gratefully.

The doorbell went. His aunt went downstairs. Peter frowned when he heard his uncle Hugh's voice. He sounded upset. He walked out onto the landing.

'Tell me it isn't true,' his uncle was protesting dazedly.

'You can't make an announcement like that on Peter's wedding day!' his aunt was saying vehemently to someone standing out of view in the hall below. 'What would people think of you?'

“What's going on?' Peter asked tautly. Jane strolled forward and looked up. 'Brian and I got married in a register office yesterday.'

Peter went very still. 'Congratulations,' he murmured. 'I am very pleased for you both.'

Ignoring the burst of angry speech from his uncle, Peter walked back into his bedroom. Well, he had known it was coming, hadn't he? And he was marrying Tony in a couple of hours. The bridesmaids, whom he had not even met, would be arriving soon-Tony's three half-sisters, all flown in from abroad for the occasion and putting up at the Savoy. His eyes burned. He quivered, drew in a deep breath and slowly let it escape again. He even contrived a wry smile. Jane had, as usual, beaten him to the starting line. And he did wish them happy. It was just that she would rather not have known today... that was all.

'You and Tony Stark...'

Peter jerked around. He hadn't heard the door open. Jane stood on the threshold, her eyes glittering feverishly beneath the stylish brimmed hat she wore.

'Please don't cause a scene,' Janice Dalton pleaded tautly, preceding her daughter into the room.

'Peter makes me sick,' Jane hissed rawly, ignoring her mother. 'Always says the right thing, always does the right thing. And—whoopee— he grabs a billionaire the same day he loses Brian! I bet Tony Stark is madly in love with him too... he certainly can't wait to get him to the altar! I bet his mother-in-law adores him just like that old witch Shorter does! I bet he's going to spend the rest of his life in the lap of luxury, cosseted and appreciated and adored. It would make anyone want to throw up!'

And with that bitterly resentful conclusion Jane stalked out again. The only sound that broke the thrumming silence was the thunderous slam of the front door.

Tight-mouthed, Peter's aunt sank into a chair. 'She's so horribly jealous of you. She always was...'

Jealous? Jane jealous of him? Peter was stunned by the concept.

'We spoilt her more when we saw how she felt. We thought that would make her feel more secure. But it didn't change her feelings and it really isn't her fault, you know,' the older woman continued defensively. 'After all, she wasn't asked for her opinion when we took you into the family.'

'I can't believe Jane could be jealous of me.'

Her aunt gave him a humourless smile. 'Of course she's jealous, Peter. People always seem to like you more than they like her. Other omegas are envious of her looks and can't bear the competition. All too many people are willing to judge Jane for becoming involved with Brian... when reality it's something that could have happened to anyone. But that's why I've invited them both to your wedding.'

Peter slowly turned from the mirror. 'You invited them...you invited Brian?' he whispered sickly, belatedly understanding the significance of Jane's very dressy outfit.

His aunt lifted her greying head high. 'I thought it would look better if they both came. It will show our friends that there's no acrimony, just a rather last-minute change of partners.' Her voice hardened. 'I don't want people thinking badly of my daughter, Peter.'

'No.' Peter understood that, but, while he could have borne Jane out of respect to her uncle and aunt, he still didn't want Brian at his wedding.

The arrival of Tony's sisters in their finery was a very welcome diversion. Peter had not yet fathomed the complex Stark family tree that was the result of Tony's father currently being on his fifth wife. Tony's mother had been Howard Stark's first wife and the only one to pass on into history through death rather than divorce. Donatella and the identical twins, Cara and Lucilla, all crowded into Peter's far from large bedroom, bubbling with curiosity, excitement and mercifully excellent English.

'So like Tony to do the unexpected,' Donatella laughed, and spontaneously grasped Peter's hands. An attractive brunette, she was only a couple of years younger than Tony, still single and a water-colour artist of growing reputation in Italy. 'I would kiss you but I might smudge your make-up.'

'You're so beautiful!' Cara carolled with a fourteen-year-old's exuberance. 'I'm not surprised it took Tony a whole year to catch you! Papa is so relieved he's getting married at last. He thought Tony was never going to get over Elissa!'

'Let me help you with your gown.' Donatella stepped into the breach of sudden silence with easy tact while Lucilla nudged her twin in the ribs. Cara's cheeks were already burning fierily.

Elissa, being mentioned again Peter was astonished by the amount of annoyance running through him. For heaven's sake, Tony hadn't laid eyes on the wretched beta for thirteen years! Surely even the most passionate youthful love affair was little more than a sentimental memory after that length of time?

An hour later Peter walked up the aisle of the local church on his uncle's arm. Tony turned and dealt him a slow smile. His nervous tension evaporated but his sense of unreality somehow increased. So many strange faces, so few familiar in the crowds that surrounded them while the photos were being taken after the ceremony. He watched security guards keeping the Press at bay. One of them looked eerily familiar, a premature and very noticeable streak of grey evident in his otherwise black hair... Where had he seen him before? The question nagged annoyingly at the back of his mind.

Tony's father, Howard, embraced him with flattering enthusiasm. His six- foot-tall blonde wife, Francine, gave him an easy smile and shook hands. 'Welcome to the family, Peter,' she murmured in her distinctive American drawl.

As the limousine drew away from the church, Tony angled a wry glance at Peter. 'So we are finally together. Believe me, it wasn't my intention that we should scarcely see each other before the wedding. But the trips to New York and Milan were scheduled weeks ago.'

'I kept myself busy.' Peter hurried to assure him, keen to make him believe that he had not felt neglected and that he wasn't the type to moan and nag when business took him abroad. But in truth, he acknowledged, he had been thoroughly fed up. Two evenings out in three weeks, one of which had had to include his aunt and uncle, had done little to remove, the lowering suspicion that once Tony had gained Peter’s agreement to marry him he had switched his entire attention back to more important things... like making more money, when he already had so much that he couldn't spend it in a lifetime!

'Yes. I understand you've been over at Ladymead on a very regular basis—'

'I wanted to be present when the surveys were being done, and that architect you recommended was marvellously helpful,' Peter responded with enthusiasm. 'And i you remember that specialist I mentioned...?'

'Which one?' Tony enquired with a lack of interest so profound that even Peter could not have missed it.

Peter reddened. 'Sorry, am I being a bore?'

'You've kept me fully up to date with developments, on the phone,' Tony reminded him with a rather grim smile.

'You do like Ladymead?' It shook Peter at that instant to recognise the fact that he had never asked Tony that question before.

'What a foolish question, amore. Of course I do.' He reached out and linked Peter’s taut fingers with his. 'You make a ravishing bride.'

'It's a gorgeous dress—'

'Don't do that... don't put yourself down. I would not have married a less than ravishingly beautiful omega,' Tony informed him with lazy mockery.

Much of the tension that he had awakened evaporated. Had he imagined that shadow darkening his lean features? He reminded himself that Tony was volatile and that, whether he liked it or not, he had to learn not to be over-sensitive to his fairly rapid changes in mood. And since he had always been the calm type, surely that wouldn't be too difficult?

'Jane and Brian got married yesterday,' Peter told him tautly, wondering if his cousin and his ex would show up at the reception. He hadn't seen them at the church but then it was perfectly possible that he could have missed them in the crush.

'I hope it was as hole-and-corner as the courtship,' Tony said very drily. 'My aunt invited them both to the wedding.' Tony withdrew his hand with a jerk and turned shimmering dark eyes on Pete.

'She did what?'

'Jane is their daughter, Tony,' Peter pointed out ruefully. 'And my aunt felt that it would cause more comment if they weren't invited as a couple. Brian's mother has already been saying some very nasty things about Jane to anyone prepared to listen—'

'When are you going to say them? Dio... love thy enemy,' Tony grated with impatience. 'I didn't want either of them present today.'

' I can understand why I could feel that way... but not why you should.' In the back of his mind loomed the horrid realisation that within an hour of the wedding they were having their first fight. 'After all, Brian is going to be like my brother-in-law now.' And his voice fractured slightly on that daunting realisation.

Tony treated him to a sizzling glance. 'Finding it difficult to adjust?'

Peter studied the hands now knotted on his lap. 'No... but I only heard an hour before I left the house this morning. I'm getting used to the idea already—'

'But not quick enough, amore,' Tony breathed with chilling bite. 'Not quick enough.'

That chill went right down inside Peter and hurt, making him feel rejected and shut out. He had been inexcusably tactless, he told himself angrily. Naturally Tony did not want to hear about Brian on their wedding day. Why hadn't he kept his stupid mouth shut? he asked himself as he slid out of the limo outside the fabulous country hotel where the reception was being staged.

'Much better than two million you're a boy after my own heart,' Marco teased him as he kissed him on the cheek. 'No hard feelings?'

'No more cracks about boots and berries, little brother,' Tony interposed, making Marco flush.

'I'm not about to take my life in my hands.'

Sam drew him to one side, his anxious eyes meeting his. 'You didn't tell Tony all that nonsense I spouted that morning, did you?' he prompted worriedly.

'Of course not.'

'I mean, obviously,' Sam stressed with an amused shake of his head as he perceptibly relaxed, 'Tony is nuts about you! I was way out of line.'

No, Sam hadn't been as far out of line as he fondly imagined, Peter found himself thinking irritably. He was a bit fed up with people saying how madly in love Tony was with him when it was so patently obvious that he was not. Oh, yes, he might be behaving as any groom was expected to behave, but Peter knew that he was only putting on a good show. Why advertise the fact that this was a marriage of convenience? That was private, not for public consumption.

Five minutes before the meal began, Peter saw Jane and Brian slipping into the only two seats left vacant. His cousin was wearing a fixed smile. By her side Brian looked grim and uncomfortable. Nothing could have concealed the marks of strain that had thinned his face and lent a harsher line to his mouth.

'The happy twosome,' Tony commented flatly. "They deserve each other, don't you think?'

Peter focused on his wineglass. 'I wish them well. I really do.'

'If you tell yourself that often enough, I might actually start to believe it too,' Tony breathed with an undertone of rawness that sent his tension screaming up another notch.

After the meal Tony whirled him round the dance-floor with breathtaking expertise. It was Peter who mumbled apologies when he collided with his feet and who couldn't wait to sit down again because he felt that his lack of dexterity, his sheer clumsiness must be embarrassing him when every eye in the room was upon them.

A little while later he was chatting to family friends when he felt a hand touch his shoulder. Peter turned his head with an enquiring smile. He had to force the smile to stay in place when he saw Brian.

'Care to dance?' he asked loudly.

Peter hesitated, alarmingly conscious of their audience. 'If you like,' he said grudgingly.

'Jane was determined to come, so don't blame me,'

Brian muttered in an embittered undertone as he pulled him onto the floor. 'Dear God, Peter...what happened to us?'

'You know exactly what happened, Brian.'

'But I feel like some bloody pawn people push around for fun!' he vented down at Peter, his face furiously flushed. 'I was set up, Peter. Last week I found out that some private investigator had been snooping around after me, pestering my colleagues at work, blasted well paying for information about my movements!'

Peter wondered uneasily if he was drunk. 'A private investigator?' he queried, incredulous at the suggestion as they proceeded round the floor at the snail's pace of the vaguely dancing shuffle which had always been their style.

'You tell me how anyone knew Jane and I were going to be in the flat that day at that time. It was a last-minute arrangement. And who made that phone call which brought you there to find us in flagrante delicto?' he completed bitterly.

His mouth compressed. 'I really don't see that it matters now—'

'The only person I know who could afford a private investigator is your new husband!' Brian cut in with clenched teeth. 'He's rich, he's devious and he hates me like poison, and if you ask me I'm lucky I'm still alive! Back in his homeland that smooth, calculating bastard would probably just have hired a hit man to get me out of the way!'

'Have you any idea how ridiculous you sound?' Peter enquired in disbelief, tugging back from him because anger was making him grip him far too tightly and closely for comfort. 'Why should Tony have hired a private investigator?'

'Well, you ask yourself who got what he most wanted out of this nightmare. And Stark must have wanted you very badly to marry you this quickly! Very neat, wasn't it—how he was in the right place at the right time to step into my shoes...not off abroad the way he usually is, not involved with another woman... No, he was right there waiting to catch you on the rebound, wasn't he?'

'Forgive me for interrupting this touching reunion...'

Tony's smoothly controlled drawl sent a shiver down Peter's taut spinal cord as his head whipped round in shock. He had never heard that much menace, wasn't surprised when Brian paled and abruptly dropped his arms from him. 'Hates me like poison', Brian had said, and it occurred to him that that bit was certainly true.

Bypassing Brian, Tony drew Peter close, his strong face tight with suppressed anger.

Peter stumbled and said, 'Why do you dislike him so much?' 'He's still breathing, walking around, causing trouble.'

An uneasy laugh was torn from him. 'Tony... he wasn't trying to make a pass at me.'

'Were you hoping he would? Or was it enough of a power play merely to let his wife watch the two of you clinging to each other and so totally absorbed that neither of you noticed that the music had stopped?' Tony demanded with roughened quietness, dark eyes icy with condemnation.

Peter paled under the unexpected attack. 'It wasn't like that-'

'He's still in love with you... or at least he thinks he is, but he's married to another woman now. Your behaviour was inappropriate,' Tony spelt out grimly. 'As was his. But it is you whom I choose to censure, for you are my wife and I expect certain standards to be maintained, particularly in public. If you cannot maintain those standards around your former fiance, how can you possibly remain in contact with your family? There will be no ongoing problems in that department, amore. I assure you of that.'

Peter was shaken and angered by his rebuke. In all his life he could not recall any alpha ever telling him that his behaviour had been unacceptable. His pride smarted furiously. Possibly he should have been more distant with Brian in so public a setting when all too many people were aware of how recently their relationship had been severed, but he did not feel that he deserved to be dragged mortifyingly over the coals of Tony's grim disapproval as if he were a child who had let himself down in front of the grown-ups!

'If you had heard what Brian was saying, you might have understood why I was still standing there after the music had finished!' Peter returned defensively.

'You couldn't tear yourself away from him?'

Peter bridled. 'No, only not for the reasons you imagine. I couldn't believe what he was saying! Brian was accusing you of having put a private investigator on him, of having set him up to be caught in the act with Jane... for h-heaven's sake..." As he noticed the sudden narrowing of Tony's dark gaze, his immediate, poised stillness, his voice tripped and then slowly drained away.

Peter had expected him to laugh with that wonderful spontaneity of his, or at worst react with angry exasperation at such an absurd allegation. But Tony did neither. His chiselled golden features clenched, his expressive mouth flattening, and then, in that pulsing silence, one of his twin sisters bounced in between them and grabbed his hand! Throwing Peter a mischievous glance, she tugged her big brother back onto the dance-floor.

As Peter hovered with an uncertain frown pleating his brows, he saw the man with the grey streak in his hair bending down to speak to Howard Stark. And it came to him then where he had seen that man before. Outside the flat that day when he had been fleeing from the sight of Brian and Jane in each other's arms. Yet he was one of Tony's security guards. Maybe he lived in the same street. Coincidence, nothing more... How could it be anything more?

Tony couldn't possibly have had any connection with that episode. The very idea was ridiculous! Was Brian's paranoia contagious? But when had he ever known Brian to be paranoiac? Or Tony silent?

An image swam back up in his memory. Peter remembered Tony coming into his office that afternoon, not a single word of criticism passing his lips about the unanswered phones, his uncharacteristic quietness, his astonishing inability to distinguish between brandy and black coffee in spite of the fact that the bottle had been sitting in open view on Pete's desk... And even if he hadn't noticed all that he must surely have known that Peter was sloshed out of his stupid mind when he couldn't even walk in a straight line down the corridor!

The more likely scenario would have run very differently. Tony would have demanded to know why he wasn't answering the phones, seen the brandy bottle at one glance and incredulously insisted on an explanation. And only then did he recall the minor fact which he had forgotten in all the excitement. Tony should have been flying to Rome that afternoon...but he hadn't gone anywhere. Another coincidence?

With his sisters fussing around him, Peter went to change out of his wedding gown. How had Tony known that Brian was a salesman? That he lived with his cousin? Tony had known too much. And what about the dinner party he had mentioned, the keys of the company apartment right there in his pocket so that he could offer them without delay? His heartbeat was pounding so loudly that it felt as though it was sitting at the foot of her throat. Smooth, slick...

'No omega would forgive such a betrayal...' 'How could you ever trust him again...?'

What he was imagining was sheer madness, he told himself weakly, but he could not forget Tony's silence. He had neither laughed nor defended himself. His impassivity had challenged her disbelief, indeed openly invited Peter’s suspicions...

Sheathed in an elegant suit in cream and black and showered in confetti, he slid breathlessly into the limousine that was to take them to the airport.

'Tony...' Peter licked uneasily at his dry lower lip. 'I'm about to ask you what is probably a very stupid question.'

'The investigator?'

Peter tried and failed to swallow, his intensely green eyes snapping to his diamond-sharp dark gaze.

'Guilty as charged. Yes...I put an investigator on him.'

'Y-yes?' Peter felt as if his voice was fighting through layers of concrete to be heard. To have had his wild suspicion flatly, unemotionally confirmed without the smallest preamble sent shock rolling over him in thunderous waves.

'I wanted you a great deal, Peter.'

'You set an investigator on Brian?' he whispered shakily, his flesh clammy.

'And his liaison with your cousin was duly discovered. I will be very frank; my initial intent was simply to tell you that he was having an affair.'

'Was it?' he asked stupidly.

'But the kill-the-messenger principle, allied with the fear that you might well disbelieve me, convinced me that such a direct approach would be unwise. Nor was our working relationship conducive to the delivery of such a very personal revelation,' Tony spelt out levelly. 'Sadly,it was necessary that you should discover them with your own eyes.'

'S-sadly?' Peter quavered, his entire attention nailed to him with a kind of sick fascination.

'I did not know that you would surprise them in bed,' Tony continued reflectively. 'I could hardly have arranged that.'

'But it was remarkably likely, wasn't it?' Peter's voice wobbled again. 'The phone call??”

'I arranged—'

'The security guard who works for you? I saw him in the street outside the flat.'

'A precaution for your safety...' Tony was beginning to sound very slightly defensive, as if his attitude was not quite what he had envisaged. 'I knew you might be upset—'

'Might be Peter stressed in agonised disbelief.

'I wanted to know where you were, what you were doing and that you were safe from any harm. I felt responsible for you.'

His whole image of Tony shattered there and then. Brick by brick it fell apart, and then even the bricks crumbled to dust. He trembled in the face of the enormity of what he'd confessed with such incredible cool. He had set him up for the worst ordeal of his life and then calmly strolled in to play the good Samaritan and plunder what was left with the innate deviousness of a born manipulator. Peter was absolutely devastated. 'Peter... you had a right to know about their affair.'

'That's what reporters say when they rip someone's life apart for the public's entertainment—a right to know,' he repeated unevenly.

'As events swiftly proved, you would have found out anyway,' Tony reminded him grimly. 'Your cousin is pregnant. She was not about to stand idly by and watch you marry the father of her child.'

"That doesn't matter.' Numbly he moved his head to stress that negative response. Peter could feel the agony of betrayal threatening to smash a composure that consisted purely of shock. It was his second betrayal, his second acquaintance with the weakness of his own judgement in the space of a month. He had trusted Tony, and without that trust what was there?

'You played God with my life...' Peter shuddered at the awareness, suddenly understanding why Brian had said that he felt like a pawn. To have been manipulated to such a degree was intolerable. It made him feel super- small and powerless and unbelievably dumb. But what savaged him most of all was the reality that she had so blindly put Tony on a pedestal too, trusting him, listening to him, feeling grateful that he was so tolerant and sympathetic that ghastly day. Now he saw everything he had felt, everything he had thought since about Tony as suspect and unreal.

'I did intend to tell you the truth eventually.' 'Maybe never.'

'Peter... he didn't deserve you.'

'And you did? Heaven knows, you must have got some kick out of playing the concerned employer for the first time in your wretched, self- centred life!' Peter condemned. 'And it was all a lie, Tony. None of it was real!'

'My sympathy and my concern were.'

'Like hell they were!' Peter snapped, feeling the acrid scorch of tears hitting the back of his eyes. 'You must have been delighted at how wonderfully it all went to plan! I even came back to the office to make it easier for you. I got drunk, I fell into your hands like an overripe plum, didn't I?' His trembling voice broke right down the middle and he turned his head away sharply, forcing his vocal cords to do his bidding again. 'I hate you now... I'll never forgive you for this!'

At the airport he climbed out of the limousine on wobbling legs, fighting the tears off like mad. He, who never, ever cried, wanted to throw himself down in a humiliating heap and sob like a hysteric! When Tony dared to reach for his hand, he jerked away and discovered that in addition to crying he wanted to physically attack him. Never before in his life had he experienced such violent rage. So nobody was perfect...? Well, Tony hadn't touched the tip of the iceberg when he'd said that! The instant the Stark private jet was airborne Peter removed his seat belt and headed for the rear cabin, Tony followed him, his strong features taut. 'We have to talk-'

'Brian said that too and I should have bloody listened, shouldn't I?' Peter flung at him in his distress.

'Maybe he had his suspicions then, maybe we could have worked out that there was an agent provocateur involved.'

'It's a little late now...we're married.'

'And that certainly wasn't part of the original game plan, was it?' Peter accused him painfully, his head pounding fit to burst. 'You intended to catch me on the rebound and talk me into bed... but I even did that for you, didn't I? I dragged you into bed the same day!'

'Peter, don't... It wasn't like that.'

'I know what it was like... I was there!' Peter threw back rawly. 'You were prepared to wreck my future with the man I loved just for the sake of some sordid little fling! And if I had been stupid enough to agree to that I would now be clutching twenty-four red roses and a diamond bracelet! Another Tony Stark cast-off to be sniggered at by the gutter press!'

'I asked you to marry me,' Tony gritted, a dark flush highlighting his slashing cheekbones.

'Wow, I'm such a lucky boy! I've landed myself a real hero. You're treacherous and dishonest and the only reason you proposed marriage was because it finally sunk in on that boundless ego of yours that that was the only way you were going to get me!'

'If we are to stoop to that level,' Tony drawled with a flash of white teeth and blazing golden eyes, 'I would remind you that when I proposed I had already had that particular pleasure.'

Peter went white and spun clumsily away from him. The reminder outraged him. He needed to hit back so badly that he was burning up inside. 'Well, you didn't get such a great bargain... a wife who's still hopelessly in love with another man! Maybe that makes us about equal,' she taunted bitterly out of savaged pride.

But the soft click of the door shutting on his exit was his only reply. A sob of stifled distress abruptly broke from Peter's compressed lips, and then another. Peter flung himself on the built-in bed and pushed his convulsing face into the softness of a pillow. Torn in two by the violence of his emotions, he let the tears flow because for the first time in many years of unyielding self-discipline he couldn't hold them back. In any case, there was no Jane here now to sneer and laugh at such pathetic weakness.

How could Tony have done that to him? How could he have coolly admitted to such vile and inexcusable interference? Didn't he realise that this totally smashed the fragile foundations of their relationship? That there was nothing left—nothing but hatred and resentment and bitter regret inside him now.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

UNFAMILIAR sounds woke Peter by degrees: quick, firm footsteps, the chiming clink of glass and china, then the swish of heavy curtains slowly being drawn back. Sunlight warmed his drowsy face and he opened his eyes.

'Buon giorno, signore.' A middle-aged woman was extending a satin and lace wrap to him with a smile.

Peter, sitting up with a start, found himself enveloped in the garment. The pillows were plumped and a tray set before him. Venice... he was in Venice in the magnificent palazzo which had been in the Stark family for centuries. They had arrived very late last night to be greeted by the housekeeper, Marcella. Declining the offer of supper, Peter had been shown up to this exquisitely furnished room, so exhausted that it had been an effort; to spare his fabulously ornate surroundings more than a dull-eyed glance. As he glanced at his watch now he realized in astonishment that he had slept the morning away.

Only when the bustling Marcella skimmed curious dark eyes across the pristine white pillow beside him did Peter recall that last night had been his wedding night, his creamy skin reddened with sudden embarrassment. It was perfectly obvious that he had spent the night alone and undisturbed. Why on earth should he be blushing over the fact? he asked himself furiously.

Yet he had somehow still expected to wake up with Tony beside him. The discovery of that inexplicable conviction infuriated him even more. Why on earth should he have expected that? he could only be grateful that Tony had accepted the reality that nothing would persuade him to share a bed with him now! After all, Peter had maintained a frigid silence from the instant the jet had landed, speaking only when forced to do so, making him hostility pointedly obvious. So why did the memory of that mute response in the face of Tony’s teeth-clenching perfect manners now make him squirm?

Some ten minutes later, still savoring the last bite of the delicious light meal he had eaten, Peter thrust away the tray and sprang out of bed. The skyline beyond the windows was a visual feast of domes, pinnacles, oddly shaped chimneys and campaniles. The Grand Canal below was as busy as any city highway at rush hour but the traffic was far more interesting. A speedboat foamed past, followed at a more sedate pace by a chugging vaporetti crammed to capacity and then a little barge heaped with vegetable produce, tailed by an old-fashioned fishing boat. Peter couldn't help being charmed by the sheer colorful vivacity of the scene.

In the adjoining bathroom he sank into a sumptuous sunken bath so large that it reminded him of a miniature swimming pool. But even such sybaritic splendor couldn't make him relax. He had rushed into marriage at breakneck speed. Who was to say that he hadn't asked for what he got? Who was to say that he didn't thoroughly deserve the mess he was now in? No such thing as a perfect hero, Peter, he told himself. But a male with a scruple or two—had that been too much to hope for?

Tony had no regrets either. Why should he care how it felt to be forced to see oneself as a purely sexual object... an omega thing, desired for his body and for nothing else? For when you stripped all the pretenses away that was the true sum of his worth to Tony. He had used all the right buzzwords like 'home' and 'family', blinding Peter with specious flattery and clever argument, but ultimately Tony’s sole objective had been his voluntary placing of his physical self into the bed of his choosing. With Peter in love with another alpha and mere weeks from his wedding, the average alpha would have seen him as out of reach. But Tony lived in the rarefied society of the very rich, where anything could be acquired for the right price... or the right tactics. And Tony was famous for being so tortuously serpentine in his business negotiations and so innately secretive that even his top executives could be surprised, red- faced and drop-jawed when he pulled off some deal entirely on his own.

'You never really know what Tony is up to. It fairly keeps you on your toes,' Sam had grumbled once.

The decision to expose Brian's infidelity had cost Tony not one sleepless night. Flicking through his options, Tony had known that nothing could better a first-hand encounter with Peter’s fiancée’s feet of clay. And in one chillingly precise move he had ensured that the omega’s engagement would be broken so that he could smoothly step into the breach to persuade him that Tony was the 'far more entertaining possibility' that his future could offer.

Whatever else Tony was he was ruthless, aggressively resourceful and he thrived on challenge. Only what you saw was not necessarily what you got with Tony Stark, he conceded painfully. Like some science-fiction shape-shifter, Tony could fit himself to any required backdrop, so that within a head-spinning handful of days Peter had been treated to Tony the reformed womanizer, hearing the pure clarion call of domesticity, talking about settling down, Tony the family man... Tears stung Peter's embittered eyes. Well, they said that there was a fool born every minute. Peter had swallowed every lying word whole! 'Did you sleep well?'

Dredged from his all-absorbing thoughts with a vengeance, Peter flinched in horror before he abruptly catapulted upright in a wave of noisily displaced water and snatched at a towel to shield his dripping length from the brazen male poised scant feet from him. Wide-eyed with disbelief, he clutched frantically at the towel and gaped at him. 'How dare you?' Peter shrilled.

An ebony brow was elevated. 'How dare I what?'

'Invade my privacy!' Peter gasped, hotly flushed as he struggled to anchor the fleecy towel round him, but the foot of it had already trailed in the water and the sodden weight of fabric was anything but easy to handle. 'Get out of here!'

'I see you have miraculously rediscovered your tongue.' Supremely at ease, Tony sank down on a corner of the bath, an unhidden smile of amusement curving his expressive mouth. Densely lashed golden eyes engaged on a boldly unapologetic survey of every gleaming wet inch of pale flesh on view. 'What a promising start to the new day...'

'I want you to listen to me.'

'I am a captive audience,' Tony assured him cheerfully.

Peter quivered with rage. If there was one thing he couldn't bear, it was not to be taken seriously. 'You're trying to behave as if yesterday never happened!'

A lean brown hand snaked out and caught his left hand, one long forefinger suggestively brushing the circle of bridal gold he wore. 'Didn't it?'

Deprived of one hand's anchorage, the towel dipped down dangerously low and with a strangled hiss of mingled temper and mortification Peter dropped down into the water again. 'Go away!' he roared at him furiously.

'You're changing... You're changing into the omega you've always kept hidden and stifled,' Tony murmured with quiet satisfaction. 'The omega you were born to be. Fiery and passionate, not quiet and submissive. I saw it in Marco's studio first—all that you would conceal and all that I would set free.'

Peter opened his sultry mouth and closed it again, trembling with fury. 'Don't try to change the subject,' he finally shot back at him.

'Why would I do that? You needed to know the truth. I made no attempt to conceal it,' Tony reminded him. "The brandy bottle was the one unknown, amore. I suspect that without that handicap you would have suspected the truth the same day. I did not foresee how rapidly events would move... or how swiftly our relationship would develop. I was prepared to wait for you to turn to me.'

'You don't even seem to appreciate the evil of what you've done!' Peter launched at him.

'The evil was Shorter's, amore. Don't make the mistake of laying the original sin at my door,' Tony warned him softly. 'Had he been faithful, I would have been powerless to interfere.'

'You had no right to interfere!'

'I saw my advantage and I used it. What else would you have expected me to do? If I hadn't intervened, you would have suffered a far more public betrayal. I don't believe that your fiancé had any intention of replacing you with your cousin... but the lady had other ideas,' Tony imparted with grim dark eyes. 'How much closer to the wedding would you have liked to come?'

Peter’s teeth gritted. 'That's not relevant!'

'You think not? Without my "evil" intervention, kid, the invitations would have been out, the wedding presents arriving. Your cousin has a sense of the dramatic. I think she would have left it to the eleventh hour You would have been greeted out of the blue by the an-announcement that they were in love. Would you have preferred that scenario?'

'Shut up, Tony!' Peter blitzed back at him wanting to cover his ears from his devious reasoning 'Shut up!'

Tony dealt him a uniquely cynical appraisal, his handsome mouth twisting. 'No, you would not have fallen over yourself for the opportunity to play the jilted bride, a sad object of pity to all concerned. You are far too proud to willingly subject yourself to such humiliation.'

'Damn you, Tony...I hate you!' Resentment was blazing out of control like a forest fire inside him.

'You married me to save face, amore... If I have to live with that reality, why shouldn't you?' Tony drawled murderously quietly.

'You sneaky, manipulative swine!' Lunging forward without hesitation, Peter closed two angry hands over the hem of his immaculate grey jacket and tipped him backwards into the bath.

There was a burst of startled Italian, a resounding splash, a sudden dismaying weight on Peter’s extended lower limbs and then an instant of stark silence. And then Tony laughed. He threw back his handsome dark head and laughed with uninhibited appreciation.

'You asked for that,' Peter bit out mutinously, refusing to share in his amusement. 'Now perhaps you'll remove yourself.'

Tony bent forward and flipped off his shoes and socks. 'I don't think so,' he murmured, straightening his back and shrugging his shoulders out of his jacket, pitching it carelessly aside. 'And what’s that supposed to mean?' He jerked his tie loose, then embarked on unbuttoning his shirt. 'I am where I want to be—'

'Let me up,' Peter instructed feverishly, pinned in place by the weight of his hard length.

Tony angled up his lean flanks to unzip his trousers and Peter took advantage of the movement to snake his legs back, but he was far too quick and agile for him. He flipped over and caught his arms before Peter could complete his escape and brought his mouth down hard on him.

In a rage of incredulity, he meant to bite him, scratch him, pummel him with both furiously clenched fists. But at the same second that he fiercely probed the omega’s lips apart and delved between them with the stab of his tongue, he ran out of breath and reason and physical coordination. The alpha devoured him with hot, hungry urgency and Peter’s hands briefly loosened and then clutched with helpless desperation as he yanked him up against him, crushing his bare chest to the hard, muscular wall of Tony’s chest. Peter wanted more, so much more that every intoxicating second was only a frustrating preparation for the next. And then he released him.

In a daze he blinked as he sprang out of the bath, peeling off his shirt and dispensing with his sodden trousers and the clinging black briefs in a few impatient movements. He reached down into the water and swept Peter up as if he were an inanimate and dainty doll. Breathless confusion overwhelmed him. 'Put me down...put me down, Tony!'

'Getting me wet was a bad move, amore.' Brilliant eyes danced over his bemused face. Dio... it made the; odds of you escaping unscathed from this bedroom about ninety-nine to one.'

'If you don't let go of me!' Peter’s wrathful response ended in a strangled yell as Tony dropped him down on the welcoming luxuriousness of the bed and he bounced. Tony descended lithely onto the mattress, only to imprison him again, closing both hands over his wildly clawing ones and pressing them flat while at the same time lowering his lean, hard length to keep the rest of Peter in one place. 'Now… calm down—think,' he urged smoothly.

It struck Peter that about the very last thing he felt capable of just then was thinking. With every lethally; sexy centimeter of Tony pinned to his damp, quivering I flesh, rational thought was suspended by a sensation closer to pure panic than anything else. Already he could feel a sort of neat and restive tension threatening her already shattered composure.

'Please—'

“'I wanted you so much, kid... how could that ever be a crime?' Tony enquired, subjecting him to the full onslaught of eyes screened to a smouldering sliver of gold beneath inky black lashes. 'For a whole year I desired you and you held me at bay with cold, dismissive glances and scornful little smiles. You treated me like my father's wives once treated me

—like an unavoidable but greatly to be regretted accident of birth. No man with red blood in his veins would have resisted the challenge.'

'Stop it,' Peter gasped, blocking him out by closing his eyes. He was trying so hard not to listen while at the same time endeavoring to stamp out the burgeoning and quite appalling sexual awareness leaping to life within him every skin cell, making his breath shorten, his heartbeat race and his pulses accelerate. 'You are my wife,' Tony reminded him very softly. 'I don't want to be!' Peter bit out shakily, tiny little quivers assailing him as he angrily fought to stamp out his own hatefully physical reaction to his proximity. 'This is very sudden,' Tony husked. Temper took Peter again, strengthening his defiance. 'You think that if you chip away at me for long enough you can change the way I think... but you can't! Marco said I'd be safer with him that day and he was right. He told me to go for the two million and he was right about that too! You're just using me!' Peter condemned in sudden, bitter pain. 'And I'd rather be used for money than find myself trapped in a marriage that's a sleazy mockery of everything I believe in. At least the money would have been an honest exchange!'

Without warning, Tony freed him hands and sprang back from him. Tony’s strong dark features were harshly set. 'Is that what you really believe, amore?

With a shaking hand, Peter fumbled for the sheet, wanting to cover himself all of a sudden from that look of icy derision in Tony's eyes. 'Yes,' he muttered chokily, knowing that he had told the truth of his feelings.

Of course Tony would never have offered and he would never have taken money, but the scenario he had forced himself to draw was far more apt in his opinion than the dubious respectability of the wedding ring he wore. A cruel, cheating charade was what Tony had really given him but he had entered their marriage with very different expectations, stupidly, naively trusting and believing in every assurance he had made. Peter recalled the manner in which he had smoothly tacked on the word 'eventually' to his supposed desire for children and he understood why now.

Tony had never planned on permanence. Tony had merely dangled a wedding ring as bait so that he could satisfy his lust and his ferocious need to win, whatever the cost. If Peter hadn't been so overly emotional, so eagerly willing to be swayed by his arguments, he would have suspected that reality far sooner. A male like Tony Stark, with a father who changed wives the way other men changed their shirts, was highly unlikely to see the institution of marriage as an unbreakable bond. Tony had simply told him what he'd wanted and needed to hear.

Tears pricked his eyes again and filled him with a furious impatience at his own continuing and dismayingly unfamiliar emotionalism. He rolled himself under the sheet as if he were settling into his shroud.

Tony was already standing in the adjoining dressing room, rifling through drawers and cupboards, withdrawing fresh clothing. The significance of what he was doing slowly sank in on Peter as he abstractedly watched his every lithe, graceful movement. His sudden withdrawal had left Peter’s treacherous body aching, and his teeth clenched in shamed acknowledgement of the fact.

"This is your room?' he asked across the yawning gulf of silence, which he found quite unbearable. 'You were sleeping so soundly last night, I did not wish to disturb you.' His startlingly handsome features were shuttered, a cold contempt in his eyes which he made no attempt to conceal.

And for the first time Peter registered that Tony could affect him on a level that he had previously denied. A growing sense of fear and rejection was taking him over. Fear and rejection, he acknowledged dazedly. 'I will not hurt you', Tony had said, and yet he was hurting him. In fact all of a sudden his mind was toying with the cowardly notion that he had said too much, gone too far, offended too deeply... In dismay, he bit down so hard on his tongue to trap it between his teeth that he tasted blood. 'Submissive', he had called Peter. No, he was not going to be submissive or apologetic for honestly stating his own feelings. He had a right to say what he felt.

A right... a right—all too often suppressed and surrendered throughout his childhood. Peter had let himself be forced into a quiet, introverted little slot at an early age because if he'd dared to flex a finger out of that slot Jane had been waiting, ready to break it. And he had been so grateful that his aunt and uncle had given him a home that he hadn't fought, hadn't defended himself, hadn't expressed himself in any way which might have caused offence or brought him into more open conflict with the daughter they adored. A little martyr of a peacemaker—that was what he had been and much good it had done him!

And where would he end up if one ferociously dirty look from Tony made him want to rush in and tactfully smooth things over as he had done with everyone all his life to date? He couldn't possibly be becoming emotionally attached to Tony. You hate him now, he reminded himself... but you still don't want him to leave this room. The discovery shattered him.

Tony emerged from the dressing room, immaculate again in a supremely sophisticated cream suit that was a spectacular foil for his golden skin and exotically dark eyes. And when did you start gaping at him all the time as if he were first prize in a lottery, eyeing him up like some sort of sex-obsessed teenager with uncontrollable hormones? Peter asked himself derisively. In the midst of his increasingly frantic self-examination, Tony vented a soft, chilling laugh. Peter permitted his anxious gaze to wander guiltily back to him.

'You want to know why I married you?' he drawled. 'I thought you were different but I should have recalled that old adage that there's nothing new under the sun.' 'I thought you were different too.' But he wasn't going to share the fact that he had actually believed that Tony had miraculously been transformed from an arrogant, ruthless alpha into a family man.

'You didn't care.' Tony shot him a glance from glittering dark eyes, his scorn palpable. 'Your cozy future was smashed and you wanted it back, whatever the cost or the risk. I had the means to give it to you—'

'I don't know what you're getting at.'

'Before my very eyes, I watched you fall in love with what I could buy you... and I shouldn't complain, I picked Ladymead out of two dozen properties as the one most likely to appeal. I played a winning bet. Dio mio..

.it did not occur to me that sometimes winning can feel more like losing.'

Peter had stilled, shaken by the information that he had taken him quite deliberately to Ladymead. That Tony could actually blame Peter for the results of his own relentlessly manipulative approach disconcerted her even more. 'You're not being fair—'

'I don't feel like being fair.' His wide mouth narrowed, clenched. 'For the first time I feel a certain sympathy for Shorter. I'm not surprised that he was tempted by a normal flesh-and-blood omega, who only wanted him and not some picture-book fantasy with a fairy castle and a perfect hero.'

'I didn't expect you to be perfect.' Peter’s voice wobbled, betraying the strength of the blow he had dealt him. To hear himself compared unfavorably with Jane pierced him on his weakest flank. 'But I did expect... honesty.'

'Only you don't like it when you get it. If I'd lied yesterday, you could have kept your rigid little principles intact and you would have generously shared your body with me last night,' he derided. 'But that wasn't the option I chose. I told you the truth without hesitation.'

'It's a matter of trust... can't you understand that?' Peter was horrified to realize that he was on the brink of tears again. 'I trusted you!'

'I don't think trust played that big a role in your decision to marry me,' Tony countered very drily, his expressive mouth twisting.

'Of course it did!'

'No, Peter. Your objective was to marry well and save face. I do believe I'm the male equivalent of a trophy wife in so far as you actually take notice of my existence. So don't accuse me of using you, amore. As I see it, I'm the one who's allowed himself to be used.'

'No—' Peter began painfully, his cheeks blazing so hotly that he felt as if he was burning up.

'You took not the smallest interest in the preparations for our wedding. As it was the opening chapter on our future together, I was less than impressed by the level of your commitment. Indeed, had I not intervened, you might well have gone up the aisle in the same dress you had chosen for another man's benefit!'

'No...' Peter mumbled sickly, belatedly grasping how very much he had taken for granted.

'I called you every day and all you could talk about was medieval glass, oak panelling and the complexities of renovating listed buildings! But the ultimate insult has to have been the presence of your ex at our wedding,' Tony informed him with icy precision. 'You had the time and the opportunity to prevent that development, but you didn't. There is no pretense of love between us but I found the spectacle of you clinging like a limpet to another man in front of my family and friends deeply offensive.'

Peter’s stomach was churning with nausea now. Seen through Tony's eyes, his behaviour both before and during the wedding reached heights of crass insensitivity that he had never dreamt he could be capable of. Peter lowered his head, swallowing hard. 'No pretence of love between us', he thought wretchedly. No safe, secure raft of liking and bonding to fall back on when there was a crisis.

'And if you ever tell me again that you love him I will throw you out,' Tony completed with absolute conviction. 'I have not the faintest desire for your love but I will not tolerate the use of that kind of smug self-indulgence as a weapon... most especially not when it relates to a weak, lying, cheating little jerk who couldn't keep his pants on even within the family circle!'

The door shut with a thud. That was some exit, Tony, he conceded dazedly. Nothing like going out with a big bang. Nothing like pulling the ground from beneath my feet and changing the whole tenor of my outlook within the space of five agonisingly mortifying minutes.

Everything he had thrown at Peter had hit home hard. Guilty of bowing out on the wedding arrangements, guilty of yapping on ceaselessly about Ladymead, guilty of not having the guts to tell his relatives that he refused to have Brian at their wedding. After all, Tony, not Peter’s family, had paid for it all. And Brian's presence had ruined the day, making Peter feel self-conscious, strained and guiltily on the defensive.

Yes, he had fallen in love with Ladymead, but that was surely not a crime? The real problem had been that when Tony had phoned him their relationship had felt unreal to Peter. The house had seemed a safe subject to concentrate on. In a sense, too, he had been showing off. See, I can take care of all these things very efficiently without bothering you. See, I can turn that house into a home so fast you'll be really impressed, was what he had been trying to tell him. Only Tony had been anything but impressed.

And why should he have been? Tony had married him for sexual gratification, not for his home-making abilities... hadn't he? Yet that demeaning assumption no longer seemed to fall so neatly into place. Had Peter been overreacting to what he had learnt yesterday, letting his imagination, his insecurity run away with him? After all, he might still be shattered by the lengths to which Tony had gone in his determination to get him, but those same extremes surely indicated a great deal more than a mere fleeting sexual interest... didn't they?

Hesitantly Peter breathed in, a sense of greater calm enfolding him. For goodness' sake, he had been reacting like a neurotic! Tony had cunningly contrived the very existence of their relationship but that did not mean that absolutely everything he had told Peter was a lie! Tony might desire him but he could not believe that he would have sacrificed his freedom on that basis alone. Had Peter’s sole attraction been physical, Tony would have concentrated his brilliant powers of negotiation on persuading him into having an affair instead.

And on one other count Tony had also been right: it was wrong of him to keep on throwing up Brian. Brian was married to Jane now... and it was extraordinary, he conceded, how little emotion he could currently stir in response to that reality. No, he was no longer hopelessly in love with his former fiancé. How could you continue to love a man who had turned out to be a figment of your imagination?

Brian had lied, cheated and deceived him, then abandoned him to the heat of everyone's anger while protecting himself. But Peter understood now what it seemed that his cousin had understood all along. Brian had really wanted both of them—Peter to be the good little wife, home-maker and supportive partner, Jane for excitement, glamour and passion. And he himself had not given him that passion, so how could Peter really blame him for seeking it elsewhere? A rueful smile tinged Peter's mouth as he began to get dressed.

It was Tony he had to worry about now. So he had made mistakes...but then Tony had too. He had been too impatient. He had pushed the wedding through far too fast, denying the omega the time he had needed to adjust to their relationship. Well, whether Tony liked it or not, his necessary breathing space had come before the wedding and he had not aided his own cause by seeing Peter only twice during that period. Somehow, at the end of a phone line Tony had felt more like his boss again. Peter laughed at the idea, helplessly recalling Tony tipping backwards into the bath.

He was walking towards the grand staircase when a smiling young maid caught up with him. The girl extended a silver tray bearing an envelope with only one word slashed where the address should have been. Peter smiled too, seeing his own name inscribed in Tony's handwriting.

Alone again, he flipped open the envelope, his eyes sparkling with curiosity.

It was a cheque made out in her name for the sum of two million pounds.


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN.

PETER’S cheeks as pink as wild roses, his heartbeat thundering at the foot of his throat, Peter crossed the floor of the echoing salon. The sheer grandeur of the vast reception room overpowered him.

'I thought we would dine out this evening,' Tony drawled. 'Would you like a drink before we leave?'

Peter shook his head in a quick, nervous motion, glossy streamers of hair falling forward as he stole a glance down at the little black dress which had seemed the last word in sophistication when he'd bought it a week earlier. Now, set against the splendor of his surroundings, with Tony in a superb white dinner jacket, he had the suspicion that if he added an apron he would be easily mistaken for a waiter. Peter hovered, waiting for him to say something about the cheque, which he had immediately returned by the same method he had employed to deliver it.

Tony drained his crystal glass and set it down. 'Shall we go, then?'

Peter’s teeth gritted. Was it for this response that he had spent an entire afternoon agonizing upstairs? He had been so angry that he hadn't trusted himself to go near the alpha, had deemed it wiser to take stock and cool down. 'That cheque...' he began stiltedly.

'I've opened an account for you instead. An honest exchange, you said.' Tony sent him a cool dark glance. 'Now that we understand each other I see no need for the commercial element to be discussed again.'

Peter drew in a deep breath, his heart lurching behind his breastbone. 'Tony ... do you want a divorce?'

In the act of moving towards the door, Tony stopped dead and swung abruptly back to him.

'Because if that is what all this is about, why don't you just say so?' Peter continued, eyes flashing like jewels against his pallor. 'I mean, let's not beat around the bush here, Tony. I have already received the message that I am a big disappointment and that nothing I have done over the last month has met with your approval—'

'I don't want a divorce.' His strong face was clenched hard, his dark gaze diamond-bright. 'Well, right now I just want to swim back to the airport,' Peter confided with an uneven little laugh, his stomach churning with nausea. 'I see "MISTAKE" looming in letters ten feet tall over that ceremony yesterday. I'm so very sorry for falling for the house you dangled like bait for my benefit... but I did not agree to marry you because you were rich! And until you wrote that cheque it didn't seriously occur to me that you could even think I could be that greedy. But if this is what you call marrying well I'm afraid you can keep it, Tony!'

As Peter’s voice fractured, betraying his distress, he spun away and began walking fast towards the door. But Tony moved faster, tugging Peter back to him with lean, determined hands. Closing his arms round him from behind, he expelled his breath in a pent-up hiss. 'I owe you an apology,' he grated roughly.

Peter was rigid. He squeezed his stinging eyes shut and trembled. So much pain—more pain than he had ever experienced, and that in itself was frightening. How did he say to him that he did have feelings for him but that he didn't know where they had begun or indeed even what they were but that the concept of losing him filled Peter with panic? And he couldn't even say that he liked Tony because, right now, he didn't like Tony at all. The cruelty of that cheque when he must surely have known that Peter was talking nonsense in his distress earlier—well, that kind of cruelty was utterly foreign to Peter's nature. It scared him to feel in any way dependent on an alpha who could behave like that.

'It was my pride,' Tony confessed in a savage undertone as he bent his head down over his. 'No omega has ever treated me with such indifference.'

'It wasn't indifference. You weren't there. It was all like a dream...coming up to the wedding,' Peter explained jerkily. 'We didn't feel real but the house did. And you were so distant on the phone...I felt awkward. I didn't know what you expected from me—' 'Too much.'

Peter’s soft mouth wobbled and then compressed. 'I wanted you to be there. Too bad if you don't want to hear that—'

'Dio... it's exactly what I want to hear.'

'Is it?' he gulped.

'Even workaholics like to be missed now and again.' An uncertain shiver of amusement rippled through Peter as Tony spun him round to face him again.

He gazed down at Peter, and a long forefinger followed the silvery path of a tear stain on his cheek before taking a detour to the tremulous softness of his lower lip. There he lingered to trace that sensitive fullness. His breath got snarled up in his throat, his slender body tautening in involuntary response to the sizzling sexual energy emanating from him. 'If I'd known, I'd have flown you out,' he remarked reflectively. 'You wouldn't have seen much of me by day but at least we would have had the nights.'

Maybe all men had a one-track mind, Peter found himself thinking, with a regret that was not for sharing. It would have been more of a compliment if Tony had contrived to think of something other than the sexual benefits of his company. But then perhaps he was also guilty of expecting too much too soon. A marriage of convenience had to start somewhere, he reminded himself squarely.

'I wasn't using you,' Peter whispered feverishly, struggling to put his thoughts in order but finding it impossible. All he could really feel was enormous relief that the cold gulf that Tony had imposed between them had been bridged. 'You were there and I... needed you.'

His dark face tautened. 'And I need you now, amore.' Tony delivered the words with another meaning entirely as he dropped one hand down to the swell of his hips and arranged Peter into more intimate contact with his powerful thighs. A clenching sensation low in the pit of his stomach made him jerk as Peter felt the hard thrust of his manhood. His knees suddenly had all the consistency of jelly and his hands flew up to grip his shoulders. 'A month is a very long time for me.'

And dinner was now a long way off, Peter sensed, his cheeks burning fierily. With a husky laugh of satisfaction, Tony raked shimmering golden eyes of desire over his and suddenly swept Peter off his feet and up into Tony’s arms. 'You still blush like a virgin,' he teased, starting towards the door.

He felt hot all over when he put him down again in the bedroom and slid down the zip on his dress. This is all right, Peter told himself urgently; this is normal, natural, healthy behavior. We're married. It's OK to want him so much that you're ashamed of yourself. It is not OK to start imagining you're just a sex object again. Narrow-minded prudes are boring.

The dress pooled round Peter’s feet. He resisted an instinctive urge to cover himself. Tony's gaze locked with his. Tony’s sensual mouth slashed into a knowing smile Peter broke breathlessly into speech. 'Tony, I—'

But, reaching for Peter, he bent his dark, well-shaped head and silenced him with the heat of his hungry mouth. And the ground shifted below Peter feet. He kissed him and there was nothing but him and the hot, swirling darkness behind Peter lowered eyelids. The omega stood on tiptoe and kissed him back with all the helpless urgency of his own need, his heartbeat a wild thunder in his ears, the blood in his veins pulsing at supersonic speed. Peter was dizzy when the alpha lifted his head again, Peter’s passion-glazed eyes clinging to his.

A whimper of sound escaped low in Peter’s throat as an electric jolt of pleasure shot through him, the distended peaks of his achingly sensitive to his awakening touch. Tony backed him down onto the bed, stood over him while he undressed. Smoldering eyes raked over his and be smiled with satisfaction.

'You always wanted me,' Tony said. I His mind locked back into gear. 'No...'

But the accusation lingered and sent his memory flying back through countless uneasy encounters when he had dipped his eyes, turned his head and closed his mind even to an admission of what he was doing. Peter had blocked Tony out over and over again—so often that it had become a habit never, ever to relax around him, always to feel strained, threatened...

'You had iron self-discipline... and you were stubborn. You knew the attraction was there between us but you wouldn't admit it. It drove me crazy,' Tony told him, peeling off his shirt without once removing his intent gaze from his bemused face. 'I was afraid to make a move in case you walked out. You kept a wall between us, you never came close... you never touched me, not even accidentally.'

Involuntarily he recalled innumerable instances of his own pronounced caution in his radius. Remembering scared him. It was scary to accept that all along his body had been conscious of this powerful attraction but that his mind had resisted even acknowledging it until that day when he had walked into Peter’s office and he had told himself that he was not susceptible. That had been his first conscious admission of what Tony could make him feel. 'I didn't know,' he muttered 'You do now.' Tony folded himself down on the bed beside him and tugged him into the alpha’s arms, and the thinking stopped there as if he had pushed a button. Peter’s nostrils flared with the scent of him and he trembled as his long, lean muscularity connected with Peter. The omega met Tony’s eyes and burned in the defenseless heat of anticipation, his chest rising and falling with the quickening of his breathing, excitement stirring so fast again that it took him by storm.

Tony lowered his head and let the tip of his tongue graze a rose-pink bud, skimming a hand up over the tautness of his quivering ribcage, discovering the thunder of his racing heartbeat as his whole body leapt in response to that tiny caress.

'Tony...' he gasped.

'Feeling like this is special, kid,' he muttered raggedly. 'Dio... you are so beautiful.'

With unsteady fingers he caressed his cheekbone, wanting, wanting him so much that it was like a pain inside him as his thighs tightened on the ache in his loins. His eyes narrowed with smoky desire and then Tony curved his hands round Peter’s pale butt, touching, inciting him before he dropped his mouth there and tugged at the tormented flesh with an erotic precision that engulfed him in a scorching surge of sensation. Peter’s fingernails dug into the hard muscles of Tony’s back and then pushed through his hair as Peter’s body rose up to the alpha’s of its own volition, tiny little gasps of sensual pleasure tearing free from deep in his throat.

Tony’s fingers stroked the smooth skin of Peter’s inner thigh, mounting higher by torturous degrees that made him clutch at him in involuntary protest, drag him up again, find his mouth again for himself and exult in the hungry thrust of his tongue. Tony skimmed a finger over the hardness of Peter’s underwear so that he twisted and moaned under his mouth in a sweet agony of desperate need. And then the frustrating barrier was gone and he was expertly exploring the hardness beneath, sending him swerving violently out of control, every muscle screaming with tension as his heartbeat hammered.

Now...'Tony groaned when Peter was on the brink of an intolerable excitement.

Peter’s gaze collided blindly with Tony’s and then he pulled the omega up to receive him and drove into him hard and fast and Peter’s head fell back and he cried out with the hot, torturous pleasure of that penetration, his body yielding to the forceful possession of his. He moved again with sinuous eroticism and the pleasure increased to such unbearable limits that Peter lost himself entirely. With every tormenting stroke he took the omega higher and his nails raked down his smooth back as his spine arched and the sunburst heat in his loins suddenly expanded, every muscle clenching in response as Peter went flying over the edge into a release that convulsed him in violent waves.

In the aftermath he clung to Tony, recalling the wondrously intimate feel of him shuddering with that same satisfaction in the circle of his arms. A glorious sense of well-being enclosed him. Peter was at peace, perfectly at peace, until he became aware of the intense happiness which was fostering that quiet contentment. It was that unquestionable feeling of joy which shook Peter the most.

Tony rolled over, carrying the omega with him, and his arms instinctively tightened round Tony’s hot, damp, sleekly muscled length because...because Peter didn't want to let him go. Concealed by the wild tumble of his hair as he rested his cheek against Tony’s shoulder, his eyes flew wide at that alarming awareness. Peter also recognized within himself a surge of raw omega-like possessiveness and that made him shiver in shock.

'Cold?' Tony tugged the sheet up carefully over him and shifted again beneath him, like a cat stretching in sunlight. Peter knew that Tony was smiling. 'Much better without the brandy,' he murmured huskily.

Peter tensed. 'I wasn't drunk.'

'But you weren't quite sober either,' Tony interposed with emphasis. 'I promised you that you could trust me that night. I wasn't lying when I said that, amore mio. But I overestimated the limits of my self-control. I didn't really care why you wanted me. It was enough that you did.'

One crazy night, Peter thought, and it had changed his life. 'Why all the flowers?' he whispered curiously.

'Guilt,' he said succinctly.

'Guilt?' Peter pushed his hair out of his eyes and looked up at him with a frown.

Tony’s expressive mouth twisted. 'I wasn't expecting it to be your first time, amore. For a omega that is a significant event and you weren't a teenager any more, you were twenty-three, which suggested that abstention had been a deliberate policy. I didn't think you were likely to feel as reckless in the morning as you had the night before.'

'You were right.' His creamy skin turned pink and if he hadn't still been too shy to discuss their intimacy of that night he might have told him that.   
Tony had made it a very significant event. Even in Peter’s angry turmoil of regret, he had known that Tony had made their love-making feel special. But then why not? he reflected. Tony was a very experienced lover. At a tender nineteen, an age when Peter had still been at the stage of fumbling kisses on doorsteps, Tony had been living in no doubt very exciting sin with an older woman. Who had seduced whom? he wondered, and then suppressed the thought, scolding himself for such tasteless, inappropriate curiosity.

Tony absorbed the distant look in his brown eyes. His dark scrutiny glittering, he lifted Peter away from him and tumbled him carelessly down onto a cool patch in the spacious bed as he slid out of it. 'I'm hungry, amore. There's still plenty of time to make dinner.'

His abrupt withdrawal sharply disconcerted Peter. He watched Tony stroll into the bathroom, stared in consternation at the scratches marring the smooth, bronzed perfection of his back and dropped his head again, the warmth of that curious joy inside him ebbing fast. Peter began to wonder fearfully if the only time he would feel secure and important to Tony was when he was in bed with him, satisfying his desire.

But why should Peter need more security? Hadn't he agreed to what Tony had termed 'a practical marriage'? He couldn't expect to move the goalposts now, mustn't start to look for the kind of affectionate extras that only came naturally with love. This was an alpha who gave flowers out of guilt. The beribboned baskets had not been the attempted romantic gesture that he had dimly and foolishly imagined them to be.   
Romance was out of the question too. Sex was in, sentiment was out.

The alpha had been very honest about that. Tony valued that quality of emotional detachment in a relationship. And very possibly that was why he had married an omega in love with another alpha. Had it ever crossed his mind that that same omega might have fallen right back out of love again without even knowing it? Had it ever occurred to him that an omega who had been hurt and humiliated and then pursued by a fantastically handsome, sexy and strong alpha might find the image of his disappointing first love wholly obscured by Tony’s own?

For that, Peter registered dazedly, was what had happened. Brian's presence at their wedding had filled him with only a great deal of self-conscious embarrassment. He had felt no bitterness, no jealousy of Jane and no regret. It had been Tony who'd consumed his thoughts. It had been Tony who'd taught him the meaning of desire, Tony who'd overshadowed Brian to such an extent that within the space of a day his former fiancé had inspired him with nothing but a need to run the other way.

But no, he wasn't foolish enough to start imagining that he was falling in love with Tony now. He was bound to feel some sort of attachment to him, Peter reasoned fiercely. After all, they were married; they were lovers. The omega understood perfectly what was happening inside his mind. A kind of natural bonding to Tony was taking place...only there had been nothing remotely bonding about the manner in which he had literally dumped him off him just now!

Peter’s teeth clenched as he thrust his hair out of his flashing eyes. His trophy husband indeed' His perfect hero! Tony satisfied one appetite and immediately thought of the next. No, he needn't worry too much about inciting him to feelings of forbidden love and devotion!

'First love?'

Peter's nose wrinkled. 'You'll laugh...' 'I won't.'

'OK...I was fifteen. It was a crush, all that moony love-from-afar stuff,' Peter muttered dismissively. 'I saw him every day for weeks when I was walking home from school. He was part of the road gang who built the bypass. You said you wouldn't laugh!' In hot-cheeked reproach, Peter threw a grape at Tony, which he caught one-handed and crushed slowly between even white teeth while he endeavored to silence his mirth.   
'He was very fanciable when he took his shirt off.'

Tony tilted his tousled dark head back, a vibrant smile curing his sensual mouth. 'Beefcake appeal, amore mio? I'm surprised at you.'

'Are you really?' Widening dancing eyes, Peter treated him to a slow, sweeping survey that started at his broad, bronzed shoulders, slid down over his magnificent torso to his narrow waist and finally ended at the muscular, darkly haired thigh half-exposed by the tangled bedsheets.

'Funny, I would say that in that department I haven't changed one bit.'

Tony reached out, knotted a punitive lean hand into his hair and drew Peter down to him. ‘Naughty,' he reproved him softly, brushing his mouth provocatively across the swollen fullness of Peter’s, and his heart skipped an entire beat, a familiar tide of immediate hunger washing over him, leaving him weak.

It didn't matter how often Tony made love to him. He had found that out over the past two weeks. Tony could awaken that wanting at will. Peter had stopped trying to fight it. The blood sang in his veins with a wanton anticipation that could still make him blush. As he curved into the hard heat of him, he felt the thrusting readiness of his arousal against his and the ache between his legs intensified shamelessly. He kissed Peter breathless, then pinned his willing body under him with an earthy groan of satisfaction and sent the omega out of his mind with pleasure all over again.

'It's getting late!' Tony sprang out of bed, ruthlessly hauled the sheet from his warm, drowsy flesh. 'We're going out,' he reminded him mockingly.

Minutes later Peter stood under the shower trying to wake up again, envying Tony his electrifying energy. The omega looked dazedly back on days which had flown by in a whirl of constant activity. Tony seemed to need to busily fill every waking moment they shared. But why had he ever worried that he had made a mistake when he'd married him? he asked herself now. Tony had the power to make him feel incredibly special. Tony had plunged him into a luxurious life of complete indulgence, and nobody had ever indulged Peter's wants and wishes before.   
Being spoilt, he had discovered, took a lot of getting used to but it had certainly done wonders for his shaky self-esteem. Peter had reeled dizzily through day after wonderful day of Tony's exclusive attention.

First he had taken him shopping. Now he had a wardrobe stuffed with gorgeous designer clothes, most of them outfits that he wouldn't have dared even to look at had not Tony insisted, and for the first time Peter found himself taking a real pride in his appearance. 'Such a shame that Peter's so plain,' he had heard his grandmother complain once after fondly admiring his other grandchild's blue-eyed blonde prettiness. Peter had never felt beautiful in his life until Tony had said that he was, and, secure in the conviction that in his eyes he was not unattractive, he was beginning to see himself in a very different light.

Tony took so much interest in him, in every tiny thing about him. The alpha had had to dig through all the layers of his conviction that he was a deeply boring person to get him to open out without apology or embarrassment. But Tony had persisted and he had listened. Was he always like this? a stunningly charismatic alpha male who was highly attuned to the omega psyche, who knew exactly what it took to make an omega feel not only desirable but also fascinating? Or was this current intensity more typical of Tony at the start of a new affair...before the boredom set in? he hurriedly squashed that pessimistic thought flat.

'Wear the gold dress,' Tony suggested. 'Won't it be a bit... flashy?'

'I like flashy on you. And you owe me,' Tony drawled teasingly.

'For what?'

'For destroying my appreciation of beauty with a year of ugly navy and brown suits.'

Peter laughed, caught the reflection of his own smile in a mirror as he dressed. There were stars in his eyes and he had a crazy, irrepressible feeling of happiness that was becoming more and more familiar with every day that passed. Quickly he looked away again. But there was no avoiding what was going on inside his heart His head had nothing at all to do with it. Intelligence couldn't stop his pulses jumping every time   
Tony came within ten feet of him.

And if he was falling head over heels in love with his own husband it was not Peter’s fault, it was Tony’s. When an alpha made an omega feel this wonderful, what did he expect to earn in response? Cold, polite detachment? No doubt Tony wanted to make up for the rocky start of their marriage but, even so, he really did seem to care about him. He had to have cared to have asked him to marry him so quickly. He had to have wanted him an awful lot. It disconcerted Peter to realize that the manipulation that he had been so shocked by on their wedding day had now become something he hugged to himself as proof of the depth of Tony's desire for him.

'You look incredibly sexy...'

Peter turned. Cut on the bias, the fluid, simple lines of the gold shoestring-strapped dress accentuated the slender perfection of his figure. The gorgeous fabric shimmered seductively with his every movement.

'But rather bare...' Tony turned him back to the mirror and brushed his hair out of his forehead. He slid a slender diamond necklace round Peter’s throat, his cool, deft fingers brushing the nape of his neck as he fastened it. 'I bought earrings as well,' he murmured huskily. 'But they won't do. Your ears aren't pierced. Not very observant of me.'

Peter’s fingertips shyly brushed the glittering jewels and his eyes suddenly stung. 'It's gorgeous, Tony ...Thank you.'

'It's been an incredible two weeks, amore mio. I believe the pleasure has all been mine.' Tony let his lips feather briefly, caressingly across one bare shoulder and then he drew lithely back and enveloped Peter in a soft velvet evening jacket.

Grasping his hand, Peter stepped uncertainly onto the motor-launch, not quite accustomed as yet to the wholly frivolous height of his strappy sandals. They dined out almost every evening but the enchantment of Venice by night could not fade. The splendid facades of the palazzo along the Grand Canal were floodlit, and against the rich indigo backdrop of the night sky and the dark, reflective water the sight was a magical one.

As the launch moved off, illuminated by the dazzling lights that framed the Rialto Bridge, Peter watched Tony with compulsive intensity.   
Sometimes he wanted so badly to get inside that sleek dark head and root around for answers that made sense. Why me? he wanted to ask suddenly. What was so special about me? he was an ordinary boy from an ordinary background and Tony was an immensely wealthy alpha with a blue-blooded pedigree that could be traced back centuries. He could have married any omega or beta, yet he had chosen to marry him.

Was it utter madness or shocking vanity for him to wonder if Tony could be just a little in love with him? Maybe it was the shock of being treated with such incredible consideration and generosity which was encouraging him to cherish so wild a hope. No womanizer ever got successful by being less than charming, he reminded himself doggedly. He knows omegas inside out. Turning your head is probably just an ego-trip for him. Six months from now maybe he'll be treating you like a piece of furniture, any thrill you ever had for him staled by familiarity. .so, enjoy the Rolls-Royce treatment while it lasts.

'What's the matter with you?' Tony enquired as he handed Peter out of the launch onto solid ground again.

Peter tensed. 'Nothing.'

'You're very quiet.' Tony slanted a grim dark scrutiny over his taut profile. 'I suppose it was too much to hope that you would forget...'

'Forget what?' Peter queried, dismayed by the speed with which Tony's mood could change.

'Don't play games, amore. This is, after all, the day when you expected to drift blissfully up the aisle into Shorter's waiting arms!'

Peter was shocked by the unwelcome reminder. he turned pale, thinking that Tony only had to mention Brian and it was like having a freezer door slammed in his face. It was little wonder that he went out of his way to ensure that he never accidentally referred to the man who had been a big part of his life for almost two years.

'No, I did not think you were unaware of the fact,' Tony said very drily. 'You've put on quite an act today but it's beginning to wear thin.'

'Is it?' Peter gazed up at him, anxious eyes clinging to the starkly handsome lines of his dark features, a distinctly strained smile curving his tense mouth. 'Tony, I'd actually forgotten that this was the day.'

His brilliant eyes hardened. He said something in Italian—something derisively suggestive of disbelief. 'I had”

'I know that certain look on your face.' Tony thrust open the door of the exclusive restaurant.

'No, you don't,' Peter protested, suddenly angry at being unfairly accused.

The conversation came to a frustrating halt as the maître d' surged forward with alacrity. He was showing them to their table when a silver- haired older man thrust his chair noisily back nearby and rose with an exclamation. 'Tony?' The rest was in volatile Italian.

'Peter...' Tony drew him smoothly forward. 'Mario Bargani, a family friend.'

'You must join us.' Mario snapped his fingers imperiously to call up more chairs and settled him down firmly in his own seat. 'Tony knows everyone. my wife, Claudia.' He patted the shoulder of the stunning silver-blonde beside Peter with distinct pride of possession. 'Guy Chilton and his wife, Denise...'

Guy Chilton was already up, enthusiastically shaking hands. Mario was calling for drinks. His wife, who must have been a good twenty years his junior, was too busy competing for Tony's attention to take account of Peter.

The American woman, Denise, sighed with a wry smile. 'I believe this is your honeymoon, Peter. You should have avoided us. The men will be talking business for the rest of the evening.'

Claudia dropped down into her seat again and sent Peter a flickering glance of amusement. 'I'm quite sure Peter knows the score, Denise. She used to work for Tony, and with Tony business always come first and last. I remember my time with him well.'

'You used to work for Tony?' Peter smiled.

Claudia widened her eyes and uttered a sharp little laugh. 'Darling, do I really look as though I ever worked nine to five in some menial little office job? How frightfully uncomplimentary!'

Faint color stained Peter's cheeks as the upper-class English accent cut through him. 'I'm sorry. I misunderstood.'

'Hardly surprising.' Claudia turned hostile blue eyes on him. 'I expect you're feeling rather out of your depth in this milieu.'

With difficulty, Peter kept his apologetic smile in place. 'I'm learning all the time.'

Mario toasted them with champagne, his natural warmth in strong contrast to his wife's air of dismissive boredom. 'I'm surprised the two of you aren't on the yacht,' he commented.

'Peter gets seasick,' Tony returned casually.

His dark head shot up; surprise etched in his eyes. 'Who told you that?' 'Your aunt.' Across the table, rich dark eyes locked with hers, amusement shimmering in their depths. 'At the reception. The news necessitated a decidedly last-minute change of destination—'

'You mean you didn't know?' Tony's portly frame shook with mirth.

Peter hadn't known either. And if he could have got hold of his aunt at that instant, he would have strangled her! One sickly day trip to France while he had still been at school was scarcely sufficient evidence on which to base such an assumption.

'How very inconvenient.' Claudia oozed sympathy. 'Will you be selling Sea Spring now?'

'Certainly not for my benefit. My aunt tends to exaggerate,' Peter interposed ruefully.

'Venice has to be the most romantic city in the world,' Denise Chilton commented warmly. 'I can't think of anywhere more wonderful to spend your honeymoon.'

'But then you didn't grow up here...Tony did,' Mario’s wife said.

A near-overpowering desire to empty his glass over Claudia's head assailed Peter as the first course was delivered.

The meal progressed. Mario smoothly engaged Tony in conversation. Peter's cheeks stopped burning. Their hostess was one of Tony's exes, Peter gathered grimly, dumped with the roses and the diamonds and still simmering over the blow to her ego. He would have to develop a thicker skin for such encounters.

'You know, the resemblance is really quite remarkable,' Claudia murmured very quietly over the coffee-cups when Denise had disappeared off to the cloakroom.

Peter lifted his head. 'Sorry?'

'Tony's father and Mario are old friends. We dined with them in London last week. Apparently, Howard was staggered the first time he saw you,' Claudia continued very softly.

'I'm afraid I don't follow...'

'You're the living image of Tony's one and only true love.' Claudia's eyes were bright with spiteful amusement. 'Howard got a shock when he saw you coming down the aisle. For a moment he thought you were Elissa. Silly, of course. . she’d be twenty years older than you now... but don't they say that everyone has a double somewhere?'

A creeping veil of coldness was slowly enclosing Peter. His brain was in a fog. He could not seem to absorb what Claudia was telling him.  
'I never actually met her,' Claudia confided. 'But when Mario and I got home I dug out some old family photo albums to satisfy my curiosity.'

'Family albums?' Peter questioned with a frown.

'Elissa was married to Mario’s cousin at the time she took off with Tony...didn't you know that?'

Peter's tongue snaked out to moisten his dry lower lip. 'His cousin?' he said weakly, shooting an involuntary glance at the three men on the other side of the table, who were enjoying an animated, friendly conversation. Elissa had been married when Tony met her?

'You do have a lot to learn. Everyone blamed her, even Mario. Tony was only a boy and she was one devastating lady. Very petite, hourglass figure, long black hair just like you. Tony never did get over her. She turned him into a cold bastard. But then you're something special, aren't you?' Claudia touched her glass against the rim of Peter's in a mocking toast. 'Only with you can Tony relive his fantasy...and he doesn't even need to switch off the light!'


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

'FEEL like I need a bath...' Peter mumbled, heading for the en suite bathroom like a homing pigeon seeking sanctuary.

'Peter, did Claudia say something to upset you?'

Peter paused, his slim back rigid, and then turned his head. 'What on earth could she have said?' he managed with apparent blankness.

Tony loosened his tie and surveyed him with intent dark eyes that were sharp enough to strip paint. 'Five years ago, I met her at a wedding and invited her to a dinner party. She amused herself by shredding the looks and reputation of every other woman present. She's poisonous. I didn't see her again, nor did I sleep with her.'

Hot color had drenched Peter's former pallor. 'You don't need to explain that to me,' he told him uncomfortably.

'Because you really don't care either way, do you, amore?' A tiny muscle pulled taut at the corner of Tony's compressed mouth, his narrowed eyes more slivers of glittering gold intensity as he stared back at Peter.

'It's not like that...I mean, I'm not an idiot,' he muttered, his head pounding with so much tension that he was beginning to feel physically sick. 'I know you have a past... obviously.'

'And a wife who doesn't have a jealous, possessive bone in his body. I am so fortunate,' Tony breathed with the suggestion of gritted teeth.

Peter looked back at him, bewildered by a dialogue which barely a tenth of his brain could concentrate on. 'Tony...I'm not feeling very well,' he whispered stricken, his stomach twisting more than ever with the tension in the room.

'You don't need to make excuses and you don't need to hide in the bathroom either,' Tony delivered in a slashing undertone. 'I have no desire to share the same bed with you tonight!'

Bewilderment seized Peter as he strode out of the room.

His wretched tummy heaved. Peter fled into the bathroom and was very much preoccupied for some minutes. Finally, he rested his perspiring forehead against the cold surround of the bath and slowly got a grip on himself again before he began to undress. Claudia Bargani was vindictive. Tony had said it, Peter knew it for a fact. Normally he wouldn't have given credence to anything such an omega told him. But Claudia's revelation had still plunged Peter into deep shock. Why? Because taken in tandem with Peter's sudden marriage that revelation threatened to make a terrifying kind of sense.

Could Tony have wanted him only because he reminded him of Elissa? Did Tony even realize what might have attracted him to Peter? Or could the similarity be so striking that he had immediately recognized it? Whichever, Peter was left with the degrading possibility that he might well owe his present position as Tony's wife to something as agonizingly superficial as his face and his body. Not to mention being left at the mercy of a lot of really creepy, utterly degrading thoughts, he reflected in a tempest of angry pain.

Everyone had been stunned when Tony had married him. Peter had been stunned too when he'd proposed, he had been equally shaken by the discovery that Tony had been wildly attracted to him for the entire year that Peter had worked for him. But if he reminded Tony of the woman he had loved and lost, the woman he had never forgotten, what made Peter worthy of such obsessive desirability now seemed obvious. Was it possible that he owed everything they had shared since their marriage to the memory of another woman? The intensity of his interest, the exclusive attention, the extraordinary passion...?

Peter knew that he was tearing himself apart—in short, doing exactly what Claudia had wanted him to do—but he couldn't seem to stop doing it. But maybe Claudia had simply made it all up; maybe Claudia had a wildly inventive imagination. Peter curled up in a tight ball in a bed that felt horribly big, cold and empty. He was so tense that his muscles hurt, but it didn’t really matter because it seemed to him that every fiber of his being was in agony.

Peter loved Tony... but suddenly he hated him too— for having the power to put him through such mental hoops of fire. Wild images of revenge swept the omega’s imagination. In every one of them Tony stood looking totally defeated while he packed his bags with frigid dignity and disdain and left him flat, publicly deserted him after two weeks of marriage. The door opened. Peter ... sat up with a jerk, switched on the bedside lights.

Tony was already standing beside the bed, quite magnificently nude and characteristically unconcerned by the fact.

'What do you want?' he demanded fierily. 'You,' Tony said succinctly.

Anger gleamed like a hurricane warning in Tony’s gaze and his engrossing revenge scenario sagged like a sofa bereft of its stuffing. Tony was a long way from total defeat. Aggression emanated from every line of his lithe, sun-bronzed body as he slid into bed and reached for Peter with hands far too strong to be easily evaded. In one smooth movement he forced him down and flat again, anchoring the omega’s furious body into stillness with his own.

Peter’s teeth clenched in disbelief. 'If you don't get off me, Tony, I'll hit you!'

Tony propped his chin on the heel of one hand, his tawny eyes ablaze with very male provocation. 'Be my guest,' he challenged.

Peter’s hands bunched into fists. Tony lowered his glossy dark head and took his mouth with a raw heat that scorched. A splintering shard of answering passion pierced him, overpowering every other sense. He bruised Peter’s lips and yet still his hands opened out and clutched at him with a hunger he couldn't deny. Indeed, the hunger felt sharper, stronger, more desperate than ever before, leaving him utterly defenseless. The alpha leant back from him when he was breathless, his heartbeat racing fast enough to choke him, every skin cell and pulse thrumming with wild response.

As Peter struggled to focus on his intent dark profile, Tony closed hard fingers over the pijama pants that Peter was wearing and quite coolly ripped it away, the sound of the rending fabric preternaturally loud in the throbbing silence. Momentarily Peter went stiff with fright, and then he watched Tony’s hand touch his sensitive nipples, his thumb grazing across a straining pink nipple, and a hot, deep melting started inside him, reducing Peter to boneless, quivering collusion.

Tony let his tongue flick over the achingly sensitive peak and a strangled whimper escaped him as his whole body pushed up to Tony in an unstoppable wave of response. He lifted his head again, glittering eyes sweeping over Peter as Tony wrenched his free of the tangled remnants of silk confining his legs. He ran a sure hand back up the tightening length of one slender thigh and discovered the hardness of the omega’s cock, and the spiraling excitement that he could evoke with the tiniest caress sent him ever more violently out of control.

'No, I didn't think you would hit me...' Tony murmured softly, chillingly.

Peter fought through the wanton layers of his own suffocating pleasure and struggled to think again. 'What...?' he mumbled, relocating his voice an equal challenge.

'I touch you and you wouldn't hear a fire alarm. I touch you at any time of the day or the night and its instant surrender. You've taught me that in two short weeks. All the sex that I want, whenever I want.' 'A-Tony, what are you

—?'

'Saying?' dark eyes locked with his with icy precision. 'Dio... I am not complaining, amore. But what a waste of a year. I was needlessly cautious to a degree that now embarrasses me. Sexually harassing you between the filing cabinets would have been a hugely entertaining exercise... You can't keep your hands off me even in the middle of a fight! So, if you have to languish over the pretty blond boy you lost, why should I be offended? Between the sheets you're still incredibly willing to satisfy my most basic needs. .and your own.'

Eyes wide, Peter was rigid with shock until it belatedly dawned on him for the very first time that Tony might actually be jealous—a suspicion that made his verbal offensive wash over him. 'I wasn't thinking about Brian,' he said quietly, intently, wanting to convince him, and he would have said a great deal more with very little encouragement.

But Peter didn't get the encouragement. In coolly insolent response, Tony scanned the length of Peter’s naked body, so trustingly open to his gaze, before he met his anxious eyes again. 'Not right now, no,' he conceded with a pointed derision that was like a slap in the face. 'But, you see, I expect your full attention out of bed too. Feel free to agonize as much as you like over Shorter... but from now on I suggest you indulge your sentiments in private. Your tragedy-queen mood with its accompanying deathly silence sets my teeth on edge.'

And Peter shrank inside himself, the illusion that Tony might have been becoming jealous of that former love brutally, instantaneously dissolved. His struggle to hide his growing distress earlier had meant only one thing to Tony once Peter had denied that Claudia had played any part in his change of mood. He had assumed that Brian was behind his withdrawal—a belief that had provoked not jealousy but coldly sardonic impatience and reproof. Love him all you like; was the message he'd received. Just don't bore me to death with your silly emotionalism.

And that was when Peter felt unbearably, hideously humiliated. He read the other message that Tony was giving him too: his undeniable ability to behave like a wanton slut in bed was just about the only thing he did appreciate about Peter! With a frantic hand he snatched at the sheet and dragged it clumsily over bared skin that now shamed him. Peter curved defensively away from him; his flesh clammy. Tony used his own body like a weapon against him. He made Peter feel cheap. 'Cold and detached,' Pete had said. He stared strikingly into those stunningly but frighteningly unreadable eyes and shivered compulsively, as if he were looking into the jaws of death, repulsed by his own vulnerability.

Tony frowned, muttered something fierce in Italian and rugged Peter firmly back against his warm, muscular length. In bitter pain, he felt the familiar surge of his own body against his and knew that he could make Peter want him no matter what he did, and that chilled and mortified him even more. The omega froze in instinctive rejection. 'Don't touch me.'

His strong muscles clenched hard. 'Peter...I'm finding out that I can't live with being the consolation prize. If you want to stay married to me, you have to put the love of your life behind you,' he spelt out with hard emphasis.

Reacting to the part of that threat which related to their marriage, Peter turned white. 'As you did with Elissa?' he whispered feverishly.

His ebony brows drew together. 'Madre di Dio... what—?'

'Because you can't say you put her behind you, can you?' Peter suddenly launched at him an entire octave higher.

'Elissa doesn't come into this!' Tony dismissed with raw, stinging impatience.

Peter turned his head away, his heart thumping at the foot of his throat. 'I heard someone say... at our wedding... that I looked like her...'

The words lay there between them. The pulsing silence seemed to stretch endlessly. Peter was holding his breath. 'Tony?' he finally prompted very, very tautly.

There was slight movement beside him and the lights went out. 'No comment,' Tony murmured without any expression at all.

The response stunned Peter. He lay there rigid in the darkness but Tony made no further move towards him. However, there was nothing tense about the drowsy sigh of positively indolent satisfaction that escaped Tony as he shifted against the fine linen sheets and then lay with the stillness of complete relaxation—a reality soon borne out by the deep, even sound of his breathing as he fell asleep... while Peter lay awake. The honeymoon was over.

Tony dealt him a measuring look in the limousine carrying them across London. 'You look tired. You should go straight back to bed.' 'I'm fine, I have to unpack— ' 'The staff will do the unpacking. You might as well rest. I'll be late tonight,' he told her.

Peter stiffened. 'Then I'll go down to Ladymead, see, how the work is going.'

'I should check out the workforce first,' Tony murmured with lazy mockery, dark eyes flicking over his strained face. 'If a brawny plasterer takes off his shirt in your radius, I might be history before I know it.'

'Very funny, Tony.' Flames of color burnished in Peter’s pallor.

'I never did tell you who my first love was—' 'You mean your memory goes back that far?' Tony smiled, his mood infuriatingly buoyant. 'I was twelve. She was thirteen. I lied about my age. She blushed every time she looked at me. She had skin like a peach, black curly hair and braces on her teeth. For the whole of one week I was enraptured.' 'The longevity of your affections is remarkable.' Tony laughed appreciatively, his dark, flashing eyes colliding with Peter’s. 'When she found out I was younger, she cut me dead!'

An involuntary smile crept across the tense line of his mouth, a giant wave of love surging up inside him. Peter veiled his shadowed eyes immediately but he was angry with himself now for lying awake all night brooding. Tony had never promised to love him, had he? He had said that he could make him happy and he had, but he had also shattered his illusion that he could somehow have more. Maybe he had needed that lesson. It had been very foolish of Peter to imagine that simply because he had fallen in love Tony might have too.

So Peter did remind him of Elissa... but it was a well-known fact that people were often attracted by the same particular physical type in human relationships. Why should it be anything more sinister than that? That resemblance might initially have drawn Tony's attention to him but he was far too strong a character to have married Peter to live out some ridiculous fantasy. Any alpha who would go to such lengths would be obsessed to a degree that suggested male instability. For goodness' sake, the woman had disappeared out of Tony's life thirteen years ago, turned him off love, hurt him! Elissa had to be more of a bad memory for Tony than a good one.

An hour later Peter stood in the same bedroom where he had awakened in a bower of flowers almost two months earlier. As she recalled his panic and horror that morning, it didn't seem possible that he was the same person any more. He was changing, he acknowledged; he had changed. In a cheval-glass, he saw an omega sheathed in an elegant Christian Lacroix dress—an omega who looked rich and exclusive and who held his head high. But the alteration was more than one of appearance and self-image. When he was with Tony, Peter realized, he felt extraordinarily free simply to be himself.

And wasn't it time that Peter cleared up Tony’s misapprehensions about Brian? If only Tony had not witnessed his shock and distress that day! He had seen too much, got too close. It wasn't that surprising that he should still believe that Peter loved Brian. Not one single thing had he done to convince him otherwise. And no, Tony was not comfortable with the belief that he was the consolation prize. A rueful smile curved the omega’s lips. He didn't blame Tony for lashing out at him last night. They would have to talk.

Ladymead was festooned with scaffolding and satisfyingly alive with noise and activity. The repairs and renovation work were moving right on target. There had been no major problems, nothing the architect in charge had not been able to handle. But when the current phase was over there would still be a million things to do, including decorating and furnishing. The size of the project made his head spin but Peter could hardly wait to face the challenge.

He was wandering around the kitchen when one of the workmen put his head round the door. 'There's a woman looking for you out front, Mr. Stark!'

It was Tony's sister, Donatella. Peter stilled in momentary surprise and then walked forward smiling. 'I had no idea you were still here.'

'By the time I did my shopping, wandered round the galleries and caught up with old friends, my one-week stay easily ran over two,' Donatella admitted cheerfully.

'I saw Tony at the office and when he said you were down here I decided to join you... You don't mind?'

'I'm delighted to have the company.'

'I was dying to see it. I still can't believe my eyes. It's a wonderful old house, gloriously picturesque,' Donatella sighed appreciatively as they strolled slowly indoors. 'When Papa said that Tony had bought a ruin, we all laughed because Tony cannot bear to be uncomfortable on the domestic front. He is very spoilt that way. This dust, this dirt, this frantic upheaval would drive him crazy... but what a declaration of love that he should close his eyes to all the imperfections and buy it anyway!'

'Tony knows what I like very well.' Peter's eyes suddenly gleamed with secret amusement. Tony really hadn't needed to hedge his bets with Ladymead the day he'd proposed. Peter still would have married him. Perhaps it was time Peter told him that too. 'And he can hardly have been unaware of what was required here. The palazzo must require fairly constant maintenance.'

'But that's different. For Tony that is the home of his earliest memories. He uses it most. Papa rarely goes to Venice now,' Donatella said as they strolled round the echoing ground floor. 'He has never liked the palazzo since Tony's mother died there.'

'Did he love her so much?'

Donatella looked wry. 'He would tell you he did but then they were only together three years. I'm more cynical. With every wife but Francine he fathered another child, found his attention straying and got divorced again. I think he simply likes omegas too much, but he does like to think of himself as a family man.'

'His children do seem to be surprisingly close.' 'We have Tony to thank for that. He kept us all in contact with each other as we grew up... yet he had the toughest childhood. He had had three stepmothers by the time he was in his teens, none of them substitute mothers.' Donatella grimaced. 'Unfortunately for Tony, he was always very much Papa's favorite. Even my own mother resented Tony, which was sad. He was only a baby when his mother died. It was not his fault that each new wife felt insecure and then decided that her child was being passed over in his favor.'

'Maybe... maybe that's why he fell for an older woman,' Peter muttered abruptly, abstractedly. Understanding what drove Tony in all his complexity did not come easily to him. Yet he so badly wanted to know what made him the way he was: capable of such immense warmth and sensitivity and then such paradoxical and chilling coldness.

'As a mother figure?' Donatella uttered a reluctant laugh and shook her head. 'I don't think so, Peter. Elissa clung to Tony. She leant on him. He was by far the stronger personality.'

'What was she like?'

'As a family friend, we all liked her... That is, until she became involved with Tony.' His sister compressed her lips. 'Everyone knew she was in a lousy marriage. Her husband wasn't the faithful type and she couldn't have children. I suppose she must have been very unhappy but she never complained. She worked tirelessly for charity. She was very well-known for her good works.'

'You're describing a saint.'

'A lot of people saw her in that light, so you can imagine the shocking scandal it caused when she took off with Tony. Nobody could believe it at first but I had seen her with him...' Donatella's eyes were rueful. 'He was very mature for his age, and with Tony she was a different person. It shone out of her. She couldn't hide her love. We were all very surprised when she left Tony after her husband divorced her, but to be truthful...equally relieved.'

'Why? The age difference?'

Donatella hesitated and then sighed. 'Please don't take offence... but talking about Elissa makes me feel uncomfortable. In any case, I can only repeat gossip and my own impressions as a rather judgemental teenager. Tony has never discussed Elissa with any of us.'

Peter grimaced. Im sorry...my curiosity was running away with me.'

'Why?' her companion asked bluntly. 'Why concern yourself? It was a long time ago, an episode we were all glad to forget.'

Put like that, his own insecurities seemed neurotic. 'And you have been good for my brother, Peter. I saw a change in Tony today. He's more relaxed, less distant, not so driven as he used to be. You don't seem to be aware of the miracle you have worked. None of us ever really expected Tony to marry. When you grow up as we all did in divided households, it is very hard to have faith in marriage.'

But Tony didn't have faith in marriage. Oh, he had mustered impressive enthusiasm for the institution when he'd proposed but Peter reckoned that that had been for Peter’s benefit. No, for Tony this marriage was an experiment, with Ladymead the selected site for a home-making field test. But he would not be at all surprised if the experiment failed and he would probably be equally quick to cut his losses if their relationship hit one too many obstacles. The knowledge made Peter suppress a shiver.

Tony strolled into the drawing room of the town house shortly after midnight to find Peter curled up in the corner of a sofa, surrounded by his tablet and phone. 'I thought you would be in bed. You waited up for me...'

An irrepressible grin slanted his mouth. 'Tony, you suggested I rested this afternoon so that I wouldn't be too tired to wait up! Or did I misinterpret my instructions?'

The faintest color highlighted the hard slant of his cheekbones and then he laughed. 'I didn't realize I was so transparent.'

'You aren't as a rule,' Peter said consolingly, his softened gaze roaming over his vibrantly handsome features. 'Would you like something to eat?'

'Nothing.' He surveyed him with an intensity that made his heartbeat quicken. 'So bring me up to date on the bricks and mortar rescue mission,' he invited. 'Everything's going like clockwork.' 'When do we move?'

"That depends on how quickly I can furnish and decorate.'

'I'm amazed that you're not putting us under canvas on that field that the agent had the gross pretension to call a lawn.'

'Somehow I can't see you under canvas.' He swallowed hard and held his gaze. 'And if you don't want to live there you can sell the house when the work's finished... no hard feelings,' he asserted.

An ebony brow was elevated. 'Why?'

'I didn't decide to marry you because you promised to buy it

'But it helped...' ' When I was walking round Ladymead that day, I had no idea that you were about to ask me to marry you or that there was ever likely to be any possibility of it becoming my home.'

A slow smile curved his mobile mouth. 'But at least admit that you pictured some glossy magazine image of wholesome family domesticity: log fires, dogs and cats children...'

'It seems to me that you must have been tuned into pretty much the same wavelength,' Peter protested.

'Your wavelength. I see smoke billowing out from inefficient chimneys, cats that scratch and dogs that bark. But that's not important if you're content. Where I live isn't important to me,' Tony returned with wry emphasis. 'As a child I learnt not to put down roots because whenever I did Howard and I were on the move gain. The abandoned wives and kids always got what was euphemistically termed the marital home. Becoming too comfortable or too attached to the roof over my head was never a good idea.'

The sheer physical upheaval of separation and divorce had not occurred to Peter before. Now he felt guilty. He should have appreciated that Tony had lived in many different houses throughout his childhood, never in one secure home. Had each new wife insisted on a new roof? And every time Howard had opted for another divorce Tony's world would have been thrown into chaos again.

'While you, on the other hand...' Tony studied him with keen dark eyes. 'You grew up in a house where you were made to feel like an intruder, where nothing was ever really yours and where you felt you did not belong but where you tried very hard to fit. I can understand now why you dream of making a home that is entirely your own and why that need should be so important to you. But I have to confess that I didn't understand all that a month ago.'

And it's at times like this that I understand why I love you, Peter thought. His throat had thickened. He slid upright and covered the distance between them in seconds. Tony's arms came round him and Peter breathed in deep. 'If the chimneys smoke, I'll get them fixed, and we'll start out with only one small pet—'

'That would be stretching self-denial too far, cam. The mice in that house require an army of cats.'

'Pest control, Tony...and they've already been...three times,' he admitted ruefully.

With a husky laugh, Tony pulled him close and looked down at his beautiful face. 'Only one warning, kid... if you ever bring a wallpaper book to bed-'

'You'll put the house on the market again?' he teased as Tony lifted him off his feet.

'I couldn't do that. Ladymead is yours.'

'Mine?' he said blankly. • 'It's in your name. Think of it as a wedding present.'

'Are you selling this place?' he mumbled in a daze. 'Why? It's useful when I want to entertain.' Abandoned wives always got the marital home... Was he getting his in advance? And Tony was retaining the town house for his own use, ensuring that if they broke up he would suffer minimal inconvenience. Was it crazy of him to think like that? While he was wondering, Tony bent his dark head and exacted a long, lingering kiss that made his toes curl in wild anticipation.

Much later, lying in a wonderful tangle of peaceful satiation, Peter rubbed his cheek lovingly against a smooth shoulder and thought about the chaotic, insecure childhood Tony must have had. 'You're really close to your brother and sisters, aren't you?'

'It astonishes me when I think of what a whiny little brat Marco was, always throwing tantrums and telling tales,' he mused lazily. 'Donatella, now...she was very quiet and serious. She used to follow me everywhere. The twins... they were born shortly before I opted out of my father's tangled love life. Their mother was convinced I had to be pathologically jealous of them. Dio... she panicked if I went near them!'

'Bitch,' Peter said feelingly.

Tony vented a wry laugh. 'She's not like that now. She hasn't remarried and she hates Francine, so if there's a problem with Amore or Lucilla it lands in my lap.'

'Why not their father's?'

'Howard will use any excuse not to get involved, and his excuse is generally Francine. She rules him with a rod of iron. She's very conscious that she's survived longer than any of her predecessors. She's hard as nails but occasionally I feel a little sorry for her. She's thirty-seven and I strongly suspect she would like a child but she's convinced that a baby would land her in the divorce court, and, going on previous form, she's very probably right,' Tony conceded. 'Like me, Francine worked out a long time ago that Howard finds a wife who is also a mother a decided turn-off.'

Peter had tensed. 'But you're not like that.'

'I'd be very stupid to tell you if I was,' Tony mocked.

'Tony... be serious.'

'Why? Any prospect of us having a child is a very long way off,' he returned flatly.

Peter frowned, astonished that he could think that Peter had no right to the smallest input on the subject. 'How long... is very long?'

Tony exhaled on an impatient hiss. 'Let me put it this way, amore—I have no plans to compete with your former fiancé in the fertility stakes!'

'I beg your pardon?' Peter gasped, thoroughly disconcerted by that response as he lifted himself up to look at him.

'Nor have I any intention of changing my mind in the near future.' Tony surveyed him with hard dark eyes. 'It's not a topic open to debate. Why do you think I take responsibility for birth control? I saw this threat clouding my horizon weeks ago!'

Threat? Peter’s cheeks flamed. 'Did you indeed?'

'Si...the same second you told me that your cousin was pregnant,' Tony drawled softly. 'You are not in competition with her.'

'What on earth are you talking about? I asked a simple question,' Peter gritted defensively.

'And I gave you a simple answer. No,' Tony said emphatically. 'Sublimate your maternal urges in cats and dogs.'

Peter shifted across the bed as if he had been bitten by a rattlesnake. 'I have no idea why you had to drag Jane into this!' Peter’s voice shook with angry incomprehension and hurt.

Tony dimmed the lights. 'Go to sleep.'

'Don't treat me like a child!' he protested incredulously. 'I refuse to argue with you about this.'

'You're like your father, aren't you?' he condemned wildly.

'Madre di Dio...it I'd been like Howard, amore, you would have been dumped before the ink was dry on the marriage licence!'

In the darkness Peter went rigid with shocked disbelief. He played really dirty in a fight... And you're surprised! an inner voice caroled drily. 'So why didn't you just do that?' he demanded.

'Don't ask me in the mood I'm in.'

'I want to know!'

'It's like there's a piece of elastic which keeps on hauling me back... but at this moment, kid, it's stretched very taut!' And the fact that he didn't like the feeling at all lanced clear as a bell through every splintering syllable. 'Help yourself to a pair of scissors!' Peter suggested painfully, sick and tired of the frequency with which Tony implied that their marriage might not have a future. Every time Peter stood up to him, he unleashed that threat.

Tony bit out a raw, exasperated imprecation in Italian. Peter pinned him tremulous mouth shut with enormous effort. There was a volcano of injustice boiling up inside him. One little question, casually asked, innocently meant— for, believe it or not, he was not gasping to become pregnant right at this moment—and he wouldn't have minded if Tony had merely said he would prefer to wait a year or two. Yes, he wanted Tony's baby but only when he felt secure in their relationship and only when he felt the same way. So what on earth did Jane have to do with it? Did he really think that he would try to keep up with his cousin in such an utterly stupid way?

Or was Tony being almost too clever for his own good? he wondered painfully. Throwing up a red herring to conceal the fact that he didn't want children and certainly wouldn't risk an accidental pregnancy when he couldn't see their marriage lasting very long... was that what he had been doing? And Peter remembered, with bitter clarity, thinking that an omega in love with an alpha who did not love him might well become insecure, oversensitive and anxious. And now he knew it to be the case, Peter reflected with stricken insight.


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

'I’M SORRY,' the polite female voice responded when Peter reached for the phone at almost the same moment that he woke up in bed alone. 'Mr. Stark is in conference.'

'I'm sorry,' the same infuriatingly detached tone told him an hour later. 'Mr. Stark is not presently available.

'I am so sorry,' Peter was informed shortly before lunchtime and this time the voice sounded reprovingly weary. 'Mr. Stark is airborne.'

Airborne? Staving off a ludicrous image of Tony in free flight round the office, Peter cast aside the phone. It had finally dawned on him that he hadn't put his wife's name on the shortlist of approved callers allowed instant access to him...surely a deliberate oversight? How much enough was enough? A slow, steady anger was escalating inside Peter. He had done nothing to deserve such treatment.

Tony phoned from Paris at eight that evening. 'Things are hotting up here. I won't be back tonight,' he imparted. 'Everything OK?'

'Great,' Peter said in a stifled tone, for his anger had turned cold and heavy inside him.

'It might take me a couple of days to tie the loose ends up.'

'I understand.'

'I need a copy of a document on my desk in the library. Could you email it to me?' He passed on the details in exactly the same tone that he had always utilized when Peter had been a humble employee. And he made a discovery there and then. Tony fell back behind that detachment instinctively when anything was wrong between them. He held him at a distance, forestalling argument or indeed any form of intimacy. No longer did Peter wonder why he had felt so damnably awkward with Tony on the phone before their marriage. That chill, silent disapproval could come down the line like a blast of polar snow.

Early the next morning Peter reached a very tough decision. No, Tony wasn't going to do this to him—blowing hot, blowing cold, making him feel that the smallest disagreement or displeasure might lead to the breakdown of their marriage. It was like being forced to live on a knife-edge. The more he took of it, the worse it would get. He packed a case with casual clothing. It would mean roughing it but he intended to stay at Ladymead. All he really needed for tonight was food... and a bed. So, he would go shopping on the way down.

Peter sent an email to Tony before he climbed into the limousine.

'Dear Tony,' it ran, 'waiting to be abandoned is bad for my nerves, so I've taken care of the problem for you. I am abandoning you.'

The builders' foreman greeted him at the door of the manor house. "The phone has been ringing off the hook for you for the past two hours, Mr. Stark. Somebody called Pete.'

'So, you are there,' Pete muttered frantically when she answered the next time the phone rang. 'What the heck was in that email? Tony went through the roof and he was in a bad enough mood even before it arrived!'

'Did he tell you to track me down?'

'Obviously. This bid is at a crucial stage. He's very busy with the French negotiators,' Pete stressed with audible incredulity, that he should require such an explanation. 'Have you had bad news or something? Can't you handle it on your own? You know Tony doesn't like to be disturbed when he's—'

'I don't work for Tony anymore,' Peter reminded him. 'Just tell him I was too busy to answer the phone.'

'I can't tell Tony that!' he spluttered in horror.

'But then Tony shouldn't have asked you to deal with this.'

In the background, Peter heard a deeper masculine voice intrude. There was a short silence and then, without warning, her eardrums were seared. 'What the bloody hell are you playing at?' Tony launched down the line at him full volume. 'How dare you send me a message like that?'

'That kind of blackmail doesn't exactly make your day, does it?' Peter pointed out gently.

Tony wasn't listening. 'I want you back in London by tonight!' 'No, Tony-'

'If you don't stop this insanity right now, I'll—'

'Save your breath. I know the options. Either you make a commitment to our marriage or you let me go, and since I really don't think you have the guts to do the first I'm placing my bets on the second,' Peter murmured tightly.

He hung up the phone, his face white and stiff with strain. Then he straightened his shoulders and slowly released his breath. Now he had to wait. The next move was Tony’s to make. What he really needed, he conceded tautly, was nerves of steel, and what nerve he did have was petering out fast. Peter was risking so much... but not for so little. Would Tony come down to Ladymead? How long would it take him to come? Was Peter mad to have thrown down the gauntlet so blatantly?

He had taken Tony by surprise. You had to knock him off balance to make him listen. And if he left Peter here, chose to take him at his word—well, he was only ending what would have ended anyway, he told herself unhappily. Peter had to know whether or not he intended to give their marriage a chance. From the outside it didn't look as though Tony did. If Peter crossed him, Tony closed him out and put as much distance between them as he could. And maybe if Tony had loved him he could have handled that better, practiced patience and hoped that time would take care of the problem.

But Tony didn't love Peter. Even worse he disliked the idea that the omega had any sort of power over him, even if it was only the far from cerebral power of sex. All the control had to be on his side...just as it had been in Venice. The expert lover and the amateur. Tony had controlled everything they'd shared. Peter sensed that it had always been like that for him with omegas. He had to call every shot. He didn't compromise. And he didn't trust Peter either.

By mid-afternoon the bed that he had purchased had been delivered. For the first time in his life, Peter had employed cash as an inducement to better service. He couldn't say that he was proud of himself but he could live with it when the alternative was sleeping on the floor. Ladymead was empty by four. The workforce downed tools and took off. Peter was left alone, free to wander silent rooms and wonder how he would furnish them, but the moment he appreciated that Tony might never share the house with him any interest he might have had drained away.

Almost as quickly he began to doubt and question his own actions. Wasn't it very probable that Tony would see his behavior as a selfish, immature demand for attention? Suddenly he could not picture him responding to his change of abode with anything other than exasperated silence. Give him enough rope and let him hang himself with it—he could imagine Tony thinking like that. Peter had been the one to walk out; let him be the one to dig himself out of the tight corner he had put himself in. And that was assuming that Tony didn't decide just to let him go...

Suddenly he saw that, while he had very real concerns about their relationship, challenging Tony to such a degree had been needlessly provocative. Shouldn't he have tried harder to cut across those barriers of his to tell Tony without anger that they had to talk openly and honestly?

It was getting dark when he made himself sandwiches and then looked at them without appetite. The rain had come on slowly in a soft mist that dampened and blurred the windows. Now hailstones were lashing the panes. The electricity was only on in part of the house. As the shadows lengthened, he negotiated the magnificent main staircase with care, grateful that he had his cellphone flash. He crossed creaking floorboards in the bedroom that he had selected because it was next to the one functioning bathroom. Eventually he stopped pacing and wished that he had brought something to read with him. Shortly after ten he climbed into bed to keep warm while he listened to the rain and the wind battering the house.

A distant thumping noise woke him up at some timeless stage of the night. For a minute he was completely disorientated and then recall returned, making him spring out of his bed, breathlessly locate the light switch and grab his phone. It was almost two in the morning. From the top of the stairs, he could see the sturdy front door shuddering in complaint on its wrought-iron hinges and hurried down.

'What did I do in my last life to deserve this?' Tony splintered savagely as he rammed the door back in his eagerness to get over the threshold and out of the howling wind and rain.

Peter fell back, momentarily astonished by his appearance. Tony was soaked to the skin, his suit plastered to every muscular line of his powerful frame. He looked as if he had been swimming fully clothed, but he was not only very wet, he was also very dirty: mud was caked on his shoes and trousers and the front of a once pristine white shirt where he had clearly wiped his hands.

'If this is country life, you can bloody well keep it!' he blistered, fixing outraged golden eyes on Peter. 'The Bugatti died in a flood down that hellish mud track!'

'Oh, dear...' Peter said in a wobbly undertone, watching him rake a shaking hand through his wet, curling hair, pushing it back off his forehead as he stood there dripping, and Peter had a truly terrifying urge to put both arms round him and soothe him as if he were a furious, frustrated little boy who had just discovered the awful truth that life didn't always go his way.

'I need a bath and a drink.'

'Oh, dear...' Peter said again helplessly, knowing that neither was available and not quite sure how to break such bad news.

'My phone is still in the car!' Tony delivered between clenched teeth.

'Oh, dear...' It was hard to think of anything more positive to say.

'Madre di Dio.. .if you say that once more...!' he exploded, but at the same time he shivered convulsively.

And it was the shiver that unfroze Peter. 'You need to get out of those clothes. Come upstairs.'

'The helicopter couldn't fly in the storm,' Tony grated, still boiling with rage as he followed Peter up the stairs. 'The jet was delayed. And there's not even electric light here. Have you any idea how long I've been banging at that door?'

Peter threw open the door of the bathroom, switching on the mercifully working light with a flourish. "There's no hot water but everything else functions,' Peter told him encouragingly.

'No hot water?' Tony whispered in stunned disbelief.

Peter gave him a gentle push over the threshold and closed the door on him. Then the omega thought fast. In minutes he was fully dressed again. Grabbing his phone and pulling on a jacket, he left the house.

It was a wild night and the sky was as black as pitch. The drive, with its potholes the size of craters, was a disaster zone for anyone forced to negotiate it without light. Tony's car had died near the very foot where the drive disappeared altogether as it dipped suddenly beneath a large, dark, uninviting expanse of water. Thankfully, Tony hadn't locked his car as he should have done. Peter waded in and located his leather case, searched for the keys and assumed that he had taken them with him. It was a good half- mile trudge back to the house but the rain was slackening off and the wind was dying down.

Tony had come. Tony had actually made a big effort to come. Peter hadn't expected him tonight, not so soon. And he certainly hadn't expected him to show up in the early hours, wet and filthy, a far cry from his usual immaculately groomed self. Peter had wanted very badly to laugh once the shock had worn off but amusement would have been cruel when Tony was so clearly at the end of his tether. A lukewarm shower would be equally cruel, he reflected. Maybe he should have offered to boil the kettle for him... What a shame Peter had switched the heater off earlier when he couldn't quite work out how to set the time switch.

When he found the bathroom deserted, he thrust the case through the bedroom door like a sneak thief. He didn't look in. 'I'll make you some coffee!' Peter called winningly, and hurriedly escaped again.

Peter carefully washed the beaker that he had used earlier and wished that he hadn't been quite so ridiculously sparing in what he had brought for his own needs. He could offer Tony a biscuit, a cup of instant coffee and banana sandwiches—not exactly a feast for an alpha with a healthy appetite.

'You shouldn't have gone back to the car for me...but thanks. The gesture was appreciated.'

Peter spun round. Tony was standing in the doorway wearing a black Armani sweater and well-cut linen trousers. He looked heart-stoppingly gorgeous. Peter’s ribcage felt constrained. 'It was the least I could do. Anyway I had my phone.'

'This place is a hell-hole. And it's a judgement on me,' Tony mused fatalistically, scanning the vast, comfortless kitchen with a barely concealed shudder. 'I knew what I was doing. I disobeyed my own instincts—'

'Coffee?' Peter suggested, setting the beaker on the long, scrubbed table. 'Banana sandwiches are all I can offer in the way of food, I'm afraid.'

Tony didn't move. He exhaled sharply and surveyed her in grim silence for a long moment. 'Maybe you'd like to tell me what the hell all this is about...?'

Peter flushed uncomfortably. Tony’s anger vented, he now sounded coolly reasonable. 'I'm sorry you had such a rough time getting here—'

'Stick to the point.'

Peter stiffened. 'I had no idea you would come here tonight.'

'I very nearly didn't,' Tony admitted. 'Intelligence told me to leave you here to stew.'

'But you didn't...'

'No, rage blew me in with the storm. There was also the natural concern that something had happened that I didn't know about... some highly mysterious event which would miraculously justify your behavior.' Tony regarded Peter with hard challenge. 'And if you can't come up with that miracle I'm calling a car and going back to London.'

'You see? You're doing it again,' Peter responded tautly. 'You're threatening me; you do it all the time—'

'I don't threaten you,' Tony countered fiercely.

'Maybe you don't even realize you're doing it, maybe it's second nature.' Beneath his bright, anxious eyes, Peter’s cheeks were taut with stress. 'But you do it. If I annoy you, Tony, you immediately close me out and start telling me that our marriage is on borrowed time if I continue. You enforce conversational no-go areas—'

'That is nonsense,' Tony interposed in flat rebuttal.

Peter was holding himself so rigid that his muscles ached with strain. 'No, it isn't—'

'Dio...' Shimmering eyes whipped over him with scorching incredulity. 'You emailed me the news that you're leaving me! You drag me all the way from Paris on a fool's errand by crying wolf and then think you can tell me I deserved this childish charade?'

'I wanted you to know what emotional blackmail feels like,' Peter admitted with helpless honesty. 'You use it on me and it makes me angry too. I don't like having my strings pulled either. I don't like the fact that you make me scared to talk about things we need to talk about. I don't like being judged and refused the right to defend myself...'

Suddenly his glittering gaze pierced Peter like an arrow finding its target. 'Madre di Dio...you did all this purely because I refused to consider allowing you to become pregnant?' he demanded in outrage.

Peter flinched in disbelief and then his chin came up, his hands knotting into frustrated fists as his temper rose to the fore. 'I think I'd have to be a mental case to want your baby, Tony! Not only would you not want the child, I would undoubtedly be left to raise it on my own, and believe me, at twenty-three, with my whole life ahead of me, I have no plans to shoot myself in the foot! No intelligent omega would choose to bring a child into an unstable relationship, most especially not when their partner has made his negative attitude resoundingly clear—'

'We do not have an unstable relationship, and I'm not your partner. I'm your husband,' Tony grated with an irrelevance which merely increased Peter’s anger.

'Furthermore, I bitterly resent the suggestion that I couldn't be trusted not to become accidentally pregnant! How dare you compare me to Jane?' Peter asked him furiously, well into his stride now. 'I wouldn't trick any man like that—'

'You wanted his child,' Tony interposed icily.

Peter’s head swam. Nothing that he was trying to spell out seemed to be getting through. Tony was missing the point... or possibly he was missing his, but what mattered most to Peter at that moment was that Tony should understand that he had misjudged him and, in so doing, caused him a great deal of pain. 'That was different...'

'Patently.'

Momentarily Peter closed his eyes, needing to get a grip on his anger, knowing that this was not the discussion he had planned. Slowly he breathed in. 'It was a different sort of relationship,' he proffered. 'Brian and I... we were more friends than lovers. We shared a lot of interests. We had the same goals. Brian likes to feel secure, so do I. We agreed about so many things—'

'How touching.'

'What I'm trying to explain is that wanting children was just part of that.' Peter shrugged a shoulder and was briefly silent while he thought back. 'We had our whole future mapped out and it felt very safe, and maybe we both got a bit smug about how well matched we were... and maybe I did get so carried away organizing everything that I wouldn't have noticed if he had six Janes on the side!' ,

'You loved him,' Tony murmured harshly.

Peter lowered his head and wondered. Had he ever really loved Brian? Tony believed that Peter had been very, very fond of him but Brian had never had the power to tear his heart out as Tony did. There had been no highs, no lows, no soul-stirring fear or excitement. Two lonely people had met and formed a mutual support system which they had called love for want of a better word. 'Not as much as I thought I did. You were right about that,' he conceded wryly, his face pensive. "Three years ago Brian wanted Jane but she wasn't interested then-'

'He didn't belong to you.'

'No, it wasn't only that.' Peter wanted to be fair to her cousin. 'Back then, Jane's modelling career looked like it was heading straight to the top. She was mixing with a lot of exciting people, travelling the world, having a fabulous time. She was only twenty-one, too. My uncle and aunt may have spoilt her to death but they also landed her with a whole set of gilt-edged expectations to live up to. She was the family star. They expected her to become a supermodel and marry someone...' his soft mouth curved with amusement'... someone like you. I don't think I can blame her for not noticing Brian in those days.'

'What a very generous outlook you have.' Tony's dark gaze rested intently on his taut profile.

'No, I don't. I confess to feeling secretly pleased when her modelling career slid downhill again. She's very good at putting people's backs up. When she got into debt last year, she had to sell her apartment and her parents naturally assumed I would share my flat with her. When I think about it, Jane's had a tough time, yet Brian was always sniping at her, running her down because she hurt his ego. I should have seen that, recognized it for what it was—'

'Fatal attraction,' Tony interposed flatly. "There whether you want it to be or not.'

Peter wanted to be brave enough to ask if that was how Tony felt about him but he couldn't bring himself to plunge that deep. It wasn't a good idea to ask a question if you thought you might crumble when you got the answer, he thought. 'Brian thought he couldn't have her, so he settled for me.' Peter swallowed hard in the throbbing silence. 'I don't love him anymore, Tony.'

Tony’s strong dark features were harshly set. 'You don't need to say that, Peter.'

'You see?' he demanded abruptly, his eyes flaring. 'You're doing it again. You're refusing to accept what I say. Perhaps there's a part of you which feels happier thinking I'm still in love with Brian!'

'That's a ridiculous suggestion—'

'Is it? I'm not so sure. Out of bed,' Peter framed tightly, 'you like a certain safe, emotional distance, don't you? All the boundaries are yours. You can barely mention the fact that we're married without implying that it's not likely to last... but that it's going to be all my fault if it doesn't!'

A dark rise of blood stained his hard cheekbones.

'It makes me feel like I'm waiting for a redundancy notice, and when I phone you at the office and I can't even get to speak to you I feel like I've already been dumped!'

'What are you talking about?'

'You didn't put my name on the list, did you?' Peter accused him. 'Dio...oi course I didn't—you're my wife!' Tony gritted. 'Are you telling me that that stupid girl didn't put your calls through?'

Peter's mouth opened and shut again. It had never occurred to him that his inability to get Tony at the end of a phone line might simply be the result of human error.

'So I have her to thank for that email!' Tony was visibly enraged by the idea.

'I assumed that she was doing what she had been told to do.'

'I am such an ignorant boor that I would tell an employee that I will not take calls from my own wife?'

Peter reddened hotly. 'Well, no, but—'

'Grazie, amore... what a wonderful light I appear to you in!' 'You can't blame me for assuming—' he began defensively.

'Can't I?' Tony shot him a look of derision. 'Was it totally beyond your power to insist on speaking to me? Is it my fault you let yourself be repulsed by a little office girl?'

Peter's eyes glittered. 'Probably. On the phone you treat me as if I'm still "a little office boy". I wouldn't have been too sure of my ground had I chosen to insist. The impression I receive is...' he hesitated and then forced himself on '... is that marriage was a step too far for you.'

Tony's facial muscles had clenched hard. 'I never thought you would force a confrontation like this.'

'You didn't leave me with much choice. I'm not like you,' Peter confided shakily. 'I can't shove things under the carpet and pretend they didn't happen the way you do. I can't behave normally when you freeze me off. I get angry and I get hurt. I've never known anyone who can be so warm... and then so cold...'

Tony was very still and very pale beneath his year-round tan.

'I mean—' Peter gulped, his throat closing over, knowing that he had dived into deeper waters than he had ever envisaged, but somehow unable to stop himself. 'When you called me from Paris, Tony... I knew you were just delighted to be away from me—'

'It wasn't like that,' he countered fiercely, his graceful hands restively clenching and then digging into the pockets of his tailored trousers, pulling the fine fabric taut over his long, powerful thighs.

But he still wasn't going to tell Peter how it had been, he registered painfully. 'What I'm trying to ask is, did you ever plan for this marriage to be a real one... or was it just a manipulative game which got out of hand? You knew exactly what you had to say to persuade me to marry you but how much of it did you actually mean? If you're having regrets already, it would be kinder simply to be honest.'

Tony released his breath in a sudden hiss. He looked like someone being subjected to some highly sophisticated form of invisible torture. 'I don't have any regrets—'

'But you don't trust me.'

'I've never trusted any omega!' he bit out.

Her throat constricted. 'Tony, I'd need lessons to be one tenth as naturally devious as you are. What have you got to worry about?'

He stared back at him with fathomless eyes as dark as ebony. 'I don't want to lose you. You're very important to me, kid.'

It was the most complimentary thing that Tony had ever said to Peter that did not relate to sex. Peter breathed again, a wave of dizziness which he recognized as intense relief sweeping over him, leaving him light-headed.

'I wasn't aware that I was making you feel threatened,' Tony conceded in a driven undertone. 'But this kind of communication doesn't come easily to me. In fact, the more I feel, the less I want to talk about it.'

As Peter’s gaze collided with his rather grim half-smile of self-awareness, his heart flipped a somersault behind his breastbone. He wanted to be in his arms but instead he turned away and asked him prosaically if he wanted anything to eat.

And suddenly Tony was laughing and the tension, still humming uneasily in the atmosphere, evaporated simultaneously. 'You know, if I'd arrived here to candlelight and a champagne reception, I'd have been outraged.'

'You would have felt set up.'

'But there is such a thing as a happy medium,' Tony imparted with the unevenness of amusement tugging at his dark deep voice.

'Like a hot bath and a drink?'

'Banana sandwiches?' He repeated his earlier offer, shaking his darkly handsome head. 'I haven't had them since I was a child. Marcella used to make them for me.'

And while Peter made the sandwiches he talked about the palazzo housekeeper with a warmth that eventually made his eyes burn. Peter had noticed Tony's fondness for the older woman in Venice, hadn't really thought about it much. But now he saw a lonely, loving little boy, starved of affection by a succession of indifferent stepmothers, and with a father who was very charming and no doubt very proud of his eldest son but far too selfish to have made any attempt to give him a stable home life. Tony knew far more than he did about feeling like an outsider. That was why he had so easily understood Peter’s own insecurities.

Dawn was breaking when they finally made it to bed. 'I need to get the Bugatti moved,' Tony groaned.

"It's Saturday,' Peter reminded him. 'It won't matter if the drive's blocked but you should have locked it up.'

'What with? I fell getting out of the car. I dropped the keys in that filthy water!'

'Oh, dear.' But Peter giggled this time when he said it.

Tony hauled him down on top of him. 'You are the only omega I ever got my feet dirty for.'

'And you looked so funny!'

'And never felt less like laughing,' he admitted. 'It was not quite the entrance I had planned.'

'But I was terribly impressed by it all the same. I was struck dumb.' Tony curved a hungry hand round the pouting swell of his ass, centering every nerve-ending in his thrumming body on one hot spot, and he ran out of oxygen all in one go, shaken by the sheer intensity of his response. 'I'm feeling very encouraged, amore mio. This is another first. No nightgown,' he teased.

Perhaps not so strange an oversight. It was wonderful what increased security did for your confidence, Peter mused. Only now did he see that their marriage was as real and as important to Tony as it had always been to Peter.

'Yours?' From the doorstep, Janice Dalton scrutinized the cream Jaguar with its scarlet leather upholstery and her mouth compressed. 'Very ostentatious...'

Peter reddened slightly. 'Tony bought it for my birthday. I was disappointed that you couldn't join us for dinner.'

'I'm afraid we'd already made other arrangements.'

Peter was shown into the lounge. His determined smile revealed nothing of his uneasiness. Over the past month the Daltons had turned down his every invitation to visit. He had been relieved when his aunt had phoned him and asked his over but there was a marked coolness in the older woman's manner. What on earth was wrong? Peter wondered anxiously.

'I might as well get right to the heart of the matter,' her aunt told her stiffly. 'Jane and Brian have split up.'

Peter tensed. 'I'm sorry.'

'I wonder if you really are?' A flush had mottled the older woman's cheeks.

'Yes,' Peter said quietly. 'I am sorry.'

His aunt gave him an angry look. 'Of course you can afford to be gracious. You've done very well out of all this. Heaven knows, I never thought to see you in a brand-new Jaguar, dressed like a model!'

'Tony likes me to look smart.' And I will not tell him about this when I go home, he reflected painfully. It was uncanny how often Tony was right about people. His aunt couldn't hide her resentment that Peter had married a very rich and powerful man, while her adored daughter had married a relatively ordinary one. 'Brian's been very cruel to Jane.'

'I don't think this is any of my business.'

"That's the trouble... it's very much your business!' Janice Dalton condemned. 'Brian told Jane that he's still in love with you!'

Peter was taken aback by the angry assurance until it occurred to him that it was probably something that Brian had thrown out in an argument. Peter had known that his cousin and his former fiancé" would have a stormy relationship. Brian had very fixed ideas about the sort of wife he wanted and by no stretch of the imagination was Jane likely to fulfil a stay-at-home role. Jane didn't cook, didn't clean and sulked if she sat in more than one night a week.

'I don't believe for one minute that Brian still loves me,' Peter retorted. 'In fact I doubt that he ever did.'

'Jane's had a terrible time.' Visibly mollified by Peter's assurance, his aunt began spilling out a highly colored account of Jane's sufferings— how Brian had demanded that they live in the house which Peter had furnished, how mean he was with money, how selfish, how insensitive...

'In fact what Brian badly needs is someone to talk some sense into him!' his aunt completed, tight-mouthed. 'He wouldn't listen to me but he might listen to you.'

Peter froze. 'Me... talk to Brian?' he whispered in disbelief.

'Brian and you were always good friends. Why shouldn't you speak to him?'

'But I—'

'After all, Brian and Jane only had a harmless little flirtation and then you rushed off and got involved with Tony Stark. Let's face it, you weren't interested in having Brian back then! You couldn't have cared less.

It's time that Brian heard that from you and stopped throwing you up to Jane! Believe me, I don't like having to ask you for help,' the older woman informed him bitterly, resentfully, 'but I think you could get through to Brian where nobody else can.'

'I'm sorry, but I don't want to interfere and Jane | would be furious, and rightfully so, if I did.' Peter stood Up.

'You're being very selfish, Peter. You wouldn't be where you are now if it hadn't been for this family's generosity!' Janice Dalton shot at him in furious reproach. 'I wonder how much interest Tony Stark would have had in you if you'd been brought up in some council home?'

Peter had lost all his natural color. It shook him that his aunt could cruelly throw that debt in his face. Over the years Peter had always shown his gratitude. But maybe he was being selfish. All that crossed him mind was that to meet Brian he would have to lie to Tony because Tony would never agree to such a meeting. Tony was extremely possessive...

'You owe it to me to do whatever you can to help,' the older woman spelt out harshly.

'Jane need never know.'

'And then I melt back out of your lives again... right?'

For the first time Janice Dalton looked embarrassed.

'That's all right. Tony is all the family I need.'

'Peter...'

But Peter walked away, knowing that he would never walk willingly back into that house again. He wasn't wanted there. The little orphaned niece whom the Daltons had so generously taken into their home had committed the unforgivable sin of obscuring the family star in terms of material advancement. Peter felt slightly sick.

Further down the street he parked the car and lifted the mobile phone. Get this over with, he urged himself when he hesitated. What Tony doesn't know about won't hurt him. This isn't going to hurt anyone. Aunt Janice is right. If there is any possibility that you could help, you should try.

Peter called Brian at work.

'What do you want?' he snapped.

A wry smile touched his strained mouth. Hardly the response of a man in love, he thought.

'You've heard about Jane and me, haven't you?' he assumed peevishly.

'Do you want to talk about it?'

'Why should you care?' Brian demanded bitterly.

'Once we were good friends. It might help if we talked.'

'I don't see how... but why not?' he muttered in a self-pitying tone.

Peter agreed to meet him after work at the house. Evidently his cousin had refused to live there and Brian had moved in alone. Peter was sitting in a traffic jam when, Tony phoned.

'How did it go with your aunt?' he enquired straight off.

His stomach twisted with guilt when Peter thought of the lie he was about to tell. Shakily he breathed in. 'I'll be back late. I've actually just popped out for a few messages. My aunt's invited over some friends and I promised to stay for the evening,' he said stiltedly.

There was a long pause. 'No problems, then?'

Peter bit his lower lip and tasted blood. 'Well, my aunt's a bit cool—' 'The friends don't include Brian, do they?'

Peter almost choked. 'Of course not!'

'Just checking, amore. You sound upset. Why don't you develop a headache and bow out? I was planning to finish early tonight.'

Peter’s eyes burned. 'I'll be home as soon as I can.'

'You stay under the speed limit. No racing,' Tony warned. 'I want you back all in one healthy piece, Mr. Stark.'

The constrictions in his throat ballooned. 'Yes... Sorry, the traffic's very heavy. I have to go now...'

Damn Brian and Jane, he reflected with sudden, desperate resentment. It was one thing to wish them well, quite another to get involved to the extent of being forced to lie to Tony. But then Peter should have told the truth and faced the music. He was a lousy liar. And Tony was so attuned to his emotions now that he picked up on his tensions. Peter had this awful feeling that he was going to have to tell him anyway. And that would cause trouble. Lying had only made it worse, he saw now, and writhed with guilt.

Brian was waiting for him. Peter tried not to stare at the wallpaper half- ripped off the wall in the hall. 'Jane,' Brian said succinctly.

'You can't blame her for not wanting to live here. In every way that matters, I made this my house.'

'I blame her for everything.'

'It takes two people to have an affair.'

'But it only takes one liar to force an affair into a shotgun marriage!' Brian stabbed back bitterly. 'She told me she was pregnant...she's not! She was lying and I was the mug who believed her!'

Peter sank down on a sofa in the small sitting room and suddenly understood a great deal. For the second time that day he was forced to listen to a catalogue of woes, this time from Brian's side of the fence. Peter had some sympathy for him but he didn't let it show. The omega let him vent the worst of his spleen, knowing that it would cool him down. 'Had it ever occurred to you that she must love you an awful lot?' he asked when he'd finally finished.

'The only person Jane loves is herself.'

'She deceived you and that was wrong but she must have been desperate for you to marry her.'

'You would never have done anything like that.'

'Brian... Jane and I are chalk and cheese and always will be, but don't forget that it was Jane you really wanted.'

'That's not true...'

'Be honest with yourself. She didn't suit you as well as I did but you never stopped being attracted to her. Reminding her of me isn't fair. Where is she now?'

'Staying with a friend. I told her I wanted a divorce...'

'But you don't want one, do you? You only want to punish her,' Peter guessed, and watched him redden. 'Don't you think you could give her another chance?'

'Why should I?'

'It's up to you. But Jane won't wait forever and she won't crawl. She was very hurt when you didn't stand by her after I found the two of you together. That was the time when you should have admitted how you really felt about her. She was afraid that you and I would get back together again. I'm sure that's the only reason she lied and pretended to be pregnant.'

Well over an hour later Peter climbed back into her car. He was exhausted and he had talked himself hoarse but only time would tell whether he had done any good. At least Brian had been a lot less bitter when he'd left him.

It was a long drive back down to Ladymead. Peter thought about Tony all the way and hoped that he wouldn't lose his temper when he admitted that he had been with Brian.

The manor house was all lit up. Tony's chauffeur was putting a case in the boot of the limousine. Peter frowned slightly. He found Tony in the spacious library which he used as an office. He was slinging files into a box. Peter paused on the threshold. 'What are you doing?'

Tony lifted his dark head, ice-cold eyes landing on him in glancing assault. His strong features clenched cruelly hard, his mouth flattening. 'I'm leaving you,' he said.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the last chapter of this story, I hope you like it as much as I did.
> 
> This is an adaptation, all credits to the rightful owner: Lynne Graham

CHAPTER TEN

DEVASTATED by the announcement, Peter stared back at Tony in wide- eyed disbelief.

'In pursuit of points for being a supportive husband, I decided to join the surprise family gathering you mentioned,' Tony drawled with lethal effect.

Peter turned white with shock.

'Your uncle told me when you had left and while we were having a cozy little chat on the doorstep he also passed on the news that the other marriage in the family had broken up and that your aunt was upset. He hoped I would understand that he couldn't invite me indoors.'

Peter was trembling, his family's rudeness to Tony only another thorn in his shrinking flesh. Peter licked his dry lips. 'Tony, I can explain—'

'I know where you've been. You've been with him all evening,' Tony delivered with seething bite. 'The minute you found out that he was free again you betrayed yourself!'

'It wasn't like that!' Peter protested shakily. 'My aunt asked me to—'

'You lied to me.'

'Yes... but-'

'Did you actually make it into bed with him?' Tony demanded, a vicious edge to the sudden, slashing demand as his shimmering golden eyes cut into Peter’s. 'Dio did I transform you into a sexually confident omega for his benefit?'

'Don't be disgusting!' Peter gasped.

'I find it even more disgusting that you've most probably been sitting holding hands and mumbling sweet nothings! That turns my stomach!' Tony roared back at the omega full-blast. 'I could understand a sexual obsession even if I couldn't condone it... but this nauseating sentimental attachment of yours makes my flesh creep—especially when I think of what you were doing with me in bed last night!'

Hectic pink brightened Peter’s pallor. 'You've got it all wrong!' Peter heard the pure panic fracturing his own voice. 'My aunt asked me to talk to Brian. I knew you wouldn't want me to and I didn't want to either but I didn't have the guts to say no when she put the pressure on. I don't feel anything for Brian anymore... honestly I don't! Nothing happened, not a word was said which you could object to!'

'You lied to me—'

'I'm sorry but I was a coward. I thought I could see Brian without you ever knowing about it,' he admitted in a desperate rush. 'I just didn't want to spoil things. We've been so happy and I couldn't face another argument over him.'

'You're wasting your breath, Peter.' Tony sent him a look of cold hatred and contempt which made Peter reel back from Tony in shock. 'I'm still leaving.'

'Please listen to me...please, Tony! Brian means nothing to me—'

'No, obviously all this means slightly more to you than he does.' Tony indicated the Gothic magnificence of the room, his hard mouth twisting with bitter scorn. 'Why else would you have lied to protect yourself?'

'Because I love you!'

Tony gave a harsh laugh of incredulity. 'You bitch,' he breathed out, sweeping up the box in one powerful hand and striding past him.

Peter chased after Tony in despair. 'I mean it. I do love you!" he shouted after him, the words echoing through the great hall and coming back to him with an eerie resonance.

Tony swung back, his cheekbones fiercely prominent, the pallor beneath his skin accentuating the cold austerity of his dark eyes. 'You don't know the first thing about love, amore. You never did,' he derided in a sudden savage undertone. Tony flung him a scorching look of violent threat. 'There's no way I'll agree to a divorce. I'll keep you tied to me for years and if you ever dare to bring him into this house I'll beat the hell out of the sniveling little jerk!'

Late the next morning, Peter woke up from an uneasy doze, stiff and cold. He was lying face down on the bed, still fully dressed. He focused on the crumpled white shirt lying half beneath him. Tony's shirt, still redolent of him, retrieved from the laundry like some comforting but empty talisman. Peter’s throat ached more than ever. He faced reality. It was his own entire fault, he conceded wretchedly. How could he have been that stupid!

Until yesterday Peter had existed in a blissful glow of contentment. They had moved into Ladymead a fortnight ago in spite of the fact that work was still continuing in various corners. Tony had taken the inconvenience in his stride. He had begun to take a tentative interest in the improvements being made, occasionally making his own suggestions. He had twice accompanied Peter to buy furniture. They had spent last weekend on the yacht and the omega had discovered that he liked sailing and didn't get sick. Indeed the only time he ever felt tense with Tony was when he found himself having to swallow back words of love.

So what had Peter thought he would achieve by telling Tony that he loved him last night? Right at the beginning, Tony had made it clear that he didn't want his love...but after their wedding he had made it even more clear that he could not stand the idea of Brian having his love either. In fact, he couldn't even tolerate the mention of Brian's name without becoming aggressive, derisive or broodingly silent. Jealousy, Peter thought dazedly— rampant, murderous jealousy, not just arrogant alpha possessiveness, not just hostility to the idea that his loyalties might be divided. In Venice Peter should have had greater faith in his own suspicions. Had he understood, would he have been more honest last night?

In lying he had dug his own grave with Tony. Peter had lied on impulse, choosing what had seemed an easy way out of a difficult situation. His primary motivation had been the need not to cause trouble in his own marriage. But how on earth could he persuade Tony to trust him again after what he had done? How could he ever convince him that he loved and needed Tony, not his wealth or any other man? Well, certainly not by sitting feeling sorry for himself in yesterday's clothes with eyes as red as overripe tomatoes! came back the answer.

When Peter went downstairs, he looked into the library, for the first time really taking in the devastation which Tony had wreaked the previous night. Filing drawers and cupboard doors hung open. Books and papers were tumbled across the desktop, with many more on the floor. Tony was a formidably tidy individual in any working environment. And yet last night he had torn this immaculately organized room apart and ended up only removing a single, half-empty box.

Had he arrived home earlier than he had expected? Something told him that had he returned a couple of hours later Tony would by then have swept the boards of Ladymead so clean of his presence that Peter would have had trouble finding evidence that he had ever lived here with him. It was a chilling thought, emphasizing the frightening speed with which Tony had decided to walk out on their marriage. An instantaneous decision, immediately acted upon.

Instinctively Peter began to return the library carefully to order, and then slowly his hands fell still again. Tony wasn't coming back. Tony wasn't coming back unless he kidnapped him. The omega had given Tony the true story last night and the alpha hadn't believed him.Peter had told him that he loved him and he hadn't believed that either. The best he could do now was to face him again and repeat exactly the same things. So why was he wasting time cleaning up?,

'Don't bother to ring ahead and warn him,' Peter told Gina, the receptionist, pleasantly on his way past. 'I want to surprise him.'

'Hello, Peter...' Pete stopped dead on the threshold of his office. 'Is Tony expecting you?'

'Do I need an appointment now, Pete?' Fevered tension made Peter sharp.

He flushed. 'Sorry. Is anyone with him?'

'No, but the helicopter's waiting to take him up north.'

'I won't keep him long.'

Peter walked into Tony's office on the power of one long, pent-up breath.

He was standing by the windows. He spun lithely round and stilled, his strong features freezing into impassivity. Cold dark eyes settled on him without any perceptible emotion. That scared Peter, wiped out his prepared speech.

'Now this I didn't expect,' Tony drawled reflectively. 'I assumed you would have too much pride to create a scene here.'

'I'm not going to create any kind of scene...' His heartbeat thundered in his ears as he stared back at him with a compulsive intensity that he couldn't control. Already Peter felt as though Tony had left him at least a month ago. An agonizing sense of loss engulfed him without warning.

'But you shouldn't be here. I made my wishes very clear last night. Go home. You can have nothing to say that I am prepared to listen to.'

'But you have to listen,' Peter protested. 'Why? I don't want you anywhere near me.'

Peter’s color receded. On the drive up to London he had not prepared himself for this level of cruelty. Had Tony still been seething with anger, he could have borne it better, but rejection couched in cold detachment was infinitely more final. 'Tony... haven't you ever done anything you're ashamed of "on the spur of the moment"?' he prompted in desperation.

'Married you.'

Peter flinched as if he had struck him. 'Don't do this to us. Once you said to me, "Nobody's perfect," and I know that you have a right to be angry—'

'I am not angry.' But for an instant Peter saw a flash of stark, bitter pain in his narrowed gaze before he screened it. 'And you're embarrassing me,' he continued with cutting precision.

In a numb motion, Peter shook his head, wondering if he had imagined that pain. 'Tony?'

He shrugged back a white shirt-cuff to see his watch. 'I haven't got time for this—'

'If you say one more word, I may well hate you for the rest of my life,' Peter told him strickenly.

'Anything you feel you have to say, share it with your lawyer, not with me.' Tony strode past him to the door.

'I thought you didn't want a divorce,' Peter muttered unsteadily.

'I've changed my mind,' he imparted without turning round. 'I want you out of my life.'

As the door closed Peter was in such a daze that he slid down on the nearest seat, his stomach cramping up. Oh, you really made him listen, didn't you? Oh, you were really convincing, weren't you? he derided himself. But it had been as though Tony had retreated somewhere where he couldn't reach him.

'Peter?'

Peter glanced up to find Marco standing several feet away. He hadn't even heard the door open.

'What did you do to my brother?' he enquired with unhidden aggression. 'Where did you come from?' Peter mumbled.

'I was calling in to see how he was but I appear to have missed him. So what did you do?' he demanded again fiercely. 'He came round to my apartment last night and sat there like he'd been hit by a truck!'

'Did he?' The omega realized how low he had sunk when he experienced a flicker of hope.

'I could see he was hurting but not a blasted word could I get out of the stubborn bastard!' Marco complained. 'So what's going on?'

'I told him a lie about something and he assumed the worst and walked

out.'

'And you're surprised?'

Peter sighed. 'You couldn't say anything to me that would make me feel

any worse than I already feel...OK?'

'I don't like seeing my brother upset like, that. It would be much healthier if he got drunk and punched walls instead of walking about like the living dead!'

Peter took a deep breath. 'Could you find out where he's gone?' Marco walked to the door and bawled, Sam!'

'The Lake District,' Sam supplied cheerfully, walking in, obviously having been listening.

'What the blazes is he doing there?' Marco enquired.

'Visiting friends, I assume. He goes up there maybe twice a year. I've never gone along.'

'So?' Marco pressed impatiently. 'Who are they?'

'I spoke to the woman once. Her name's Elissa,' Sam informed them helpfully. 'I don't think I ever got her surname.'

Marco looked stunned. 'Elissa?' he repeated. 'Are you sure?'

The roof had fallen in round Peter's head. Shock was roaring through him in waves. Pete frowned in bemusement at them both as he walked back out again.

'Did you know about this?' Marco asked him sharply. 'That Tony was in touch with her again... I mean that he even knew where she was?'

'No.'

'Elissa living in England,' he muttered, still struggling with his own incredulity. 'And he never said a word.'

'I understood she was always too special to talk about.' Peter's voice quivered.

'If you're thinking that Tony is keeping a mistress he only sees twice a year, your head's away!'

'Is it?' Peter studied his feverishly linked hands through a blinding blur of tears.

'Tony is nuts about you—'

'He's never said so.'

'So he's a bit tight with the words!' Marco conceded in frustration. 'But he married you. He's living in a freezing cold house with one bathroom for your benefit. He's doing weird things like buying furniture and taking off out of the office in the middle of the day... This is not Tony as we have known him for the past thirty-four years!'

'No?''

'Peter, he's so sickeningly happy with you that he throws your name into every other sentence. Pete can't keep him in the office after five. This is a guy who cannot wait to get home to his wife every night. I ask you, is it likely he's doing a line with some old doll from his past?'

'I think I'd like to meet that old doll before I commit myself,' Peter admitted as he slowly got to his feet. Although he was still pale, his mouth was firmly set.

'What do you want to meet her for?' Marco regarded his in open dismay.

'Are you scared of what I might find? So am I... but it would be much scarier to sit at home wondering,' he confided.

It was already the middle of the afternoon. It was over two hundred miles to the small village where Elissa lived but Peter climbed into the Jag with unassailable determination. Tony might well have gone by the time he arrived... well, so be it. It was Elissa whom Peter needed to meet. He did not want to see Tony with the wretched woman. Such an encounter required a certain discretion, didn't it?

The further north Peter got, the more tense he became. Suddenly he doubted his own sanity, the need to know which had blanked out every other prompting. Tony had kept his continuing acquaintance with Elissa a secret even from his family... for how many years? And how did Peter know that Tony only saw Elissa twice a year? Sam would only be aware of those visits when Tony went directly from the office. And Elissa was discreet, wasn't she? Sam had only once spoken to her on the phone. The perfect mistress...?

The omega stopped for a meal at a motorway service station. He was exhausted and he forced himself to eat and drink simply to keep going. It was much later than he had hoped when he finally came upon the old stone farmhouse which lay about a mile outside the village on a steep, narrow road. There wasn't a single glimmer of life or light about Elissa's home. Peter stopped the car and rested his aching head back. So what now?

Was Tony in there with her? The idea totally wiped Peter out. Two long- time lovers entangled in the comfort of an adulterous bed... In silent agony he shut his eyes. Elissa had betrayed her first husband—why should she think twice about betraying an omega she had never even met? Why hadn't Tony married her? Why had she left him in the first place? Why hadn't Tony told Peter the truth?

But no, he hadn't lied except by omission. So what was the secret of Elissa's enduring appeal? If he still loved her, wouldn't he have married her?

And then finally Peter grasped wearily at an explanation for behavior which struck him as incomprehensible. Only last night Tony had told Peter that he could understand a sexual obsession. Was that Elissa's continuing attraction after all these years? Was it possible that Tony had married him to try and break free of that affair? And was it possible that he had driven him straight back into Elissa's waiting arms again?

Peter hit his lowest ebb then. Tony had been happy with him. He wouldn't have had the courage to put his pride on the line today had he not been clinging to that awareness. Only Tony had not responded... Tony had been implacably cold and unimpressed.

Why had Peter come up here? What had he hoped to achieve by confronting a woman who probably knew Tony so much better than he did? Forcing himself on Elissa would be demeaning and pointless. It sunk in on Peter then that Tony really was gone, that it would be pathetic to pursue him one more step, that he had left him with nothing to do but retire in defeat. Peter’s whole world fell in pieces around him the minute he reached that conclusion. He covered his convulsing face with his hands, a choked sob of despair ripped from his working throat.

Suddenly someone tapped on the windscreen and he was in such a state that he didn't even jump. Peter looked up and saw a woman in an incongruous pink dressing gown hovering. Gulping, Peter rolled down the window a few inches.

'Peter?' the woman said uncertainly. 'You are Peter, aren't you? I looked out when I heard a car stop. Tony described this car to me. Would you like to come in?'

'In?' Peter echoed, blinking at the lights now illuminating the previously dark house.

'I'm going to look really daft if a car comes along,' the woman pointed out gently. 'And it's beginning to rain.'

'You're...Elissa?' The soft Scottish accent was equally disconcerting.

Peter had simply assumed that Elissa was Italian. 'Everyone but Tony calls me Liz now.'

Peter snatched in a steadying breath and climbed out of the Jag, trying not to stare.

'I'm afraid you've missed him. I assume that's why you're here...but he hardly ever stays over. Still, I'm glad you came,' Elissa asserted, as if Peter's unannounced arrival were perfectly normal. 'I hate being on my own at night. John took the kids up to his mother's this evening and he won't be back until morning.'

'John?'

'My husband.' Elissa thrust wide the door of her home and Peter saw her properly for the first time.

She wasn't exactly seduction personified, in a pink toweling robe and fluffy mules. Not my double either, Peter registered, still staring. She had wide brown eyes, very curly, short dark brown hair and a figure that verged more on the plump than the petite. But she had a beautiful face and the sort of vivacious warmth that just leapt out and grabbed you.

Elissa was looking Peter over with equal fascination. 'I've been dying to meet you but Tony didn't think it was a good idea.'

'Didn't he?'

'He didn't say so.' Elissa grimaced, pushing open the door of a cozy, cluttered kitchen. 'Tony can be very tactful when he wants to be but I could see him bristling the way he does when you put your feet in it... which I always do around Tony. He's not at all like John. John is wonderfully easy to live with... Sorry!'' Like a dismayed child who had dropped a brick, Elissa clapped a hand to her mouth.

'You don't need to apologize,' Peter assured her with a glimmer of slowly awakening amusement. 'Actually, I came up here thinking you were having an affair with Tony.'

Elissa frowned in astonishment. 'But why?'

'Tony had neglected to mention the fact that he was still in touch with you.'

'I did ask him not to tell anyone. I left my old life behind and I don't want it to catch up with me again. John knows all about it, of course, but I would hate Tony's family to know we're still in touch. They really hate me,' she sighed. 'But Tony has done so much for us since our first business went bankrupt. We couldn't have gotten through that without him. He helped us get back on our feet and then start up again. Good grief...an affair,' she repeated, as if Peter's words were only now sinking in.

She swept a pile of laundry off a chair while Peter studied a montage of photos on a pinboard. 'Your children?'

'Well, technically John's. He was a widower with three children under five when we met up ten years ago. A match made in heaven,' Elissa joked. 'This was my fresh start.' She hesitated. 'I got in touch with Tony a couple of years after we broke up because I still felt guilty. I mean, I just ran out on him, which was pretty hateful after the way he'd stood by me.'

'Why did you leave?' Peter murmured.

Elissa gave him a wry look. 'I was making a mess of his life, Peter. He wasn't happy with me. He wouldn't admit it but I could feel it. I owed him so much. Without Tony's support, I would never have had the courage to leave Sal... My first husband was a very violent man,' she said tautly. 'Tony felt sorry for me. I started depending on him and the rest you can probably guess.'

'Yes,' Peter said with sympathy. 'I'm sorry I landed on your doorstep like this—'

'But how brave when you thought what you did.' Elissa surveyed him with amused but frank admiration. 'My lack of guts always got on Tony's nerves.'

'Can I ask you why Tony came up here today?'

'He owns the majority of our business, Peter. We import terracotta from Italy,' Elissa explained cheerfully. 'He refinanced us when we. couldn't get a loan after going bust the first time. John isn't terribly good with money and Tony keeps an eye on things. Well, to be honest, he watches us like a hawk so that we don't overextend ourselves again. He doesn't make much of a profit out of us either. He's been a very generous friend.'

Peter smothered an embarrassing yawn.

Elissa laughed. 'You can't possibly get back behind that wheel again. Will you stay the night?'

Tony hadn't even confided in Elissa, Peter thought as he drove back home by easy stages the next day. Elissa had thought that Tony was a little quiet, but had noticed nothing else apart from the fact that he'd appeared to be in a distinct hurry to leave again. 'A very generous friend', she had said. But was there something more on Tony's side? Was that why he had chosen not to tell Peter that he still saw the other woman? And what did it matter now anyway? He asked himself despondently as he turned up the drive to Ladymead. Nothing he had found out made the slightest difference really. Tony had left him. Yesterday Tony’s attitude to him had hardened even more. He had told Peter that he wanted a divorce.

In the frame of mind that Peter was in, it was a heck of a shock when the first thing he saw as he got out of his car was Tony striding towards him.

'Dio, where the hell have you been?' he demanded explosively. 'I've been up all night worrying myself sick. I was going to ring the police again!'

Peter blinked in bewilderment at this astonishing transformation. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his dry mouth. Tony closed his arms round Peter with such force that he very nearly knocked him off his feet. 'It doesn't matter where you have been,' he groaned then, releasing his breath with unconcealed relief. 'You've come home.'

Wide-eyed, Peter gazed up at him, taking in the tousled hair, the heavy blue shadow of stubble on his usually clean-shaven jawline, the shadows beneath his feverish dark eyes. 'Tony—'

'Please don't ever do this to me again.' With an obvious effort he loosened a grip that was threatening to crack Peter’s ribs and grasped his hands tautly in his. 'I have now lived through the worst forty-eight hours of my life. I know I asked for it, but shout at me the next time, don't disappear! Not that there'll be a next time,' he hurried to assure the omega emphatically. 'I'll never take a risk like that with you again!'

Tony had come home. Tony was practically on his knees with gratitude that he had come home. Peter’s head swam. Obviously Tony hadn't been in touch with Marco... Either that or Marco had decided to keep quiet. In a daze he looked at the glossy black head bent over their linked hands. 'We're not on the brink of a divorce anymore?' he asked, just to check.

Tony’s head flew up, stark guilt and discomfiture clenching his vibrantly handsome features. 'I was sick with jealousy and bitterness, amore. I wanted to hit back and yet the whole time you were standing there I was cutting myself in two as well.'

'You were like the iceman,' Peter whispered reflectively with a shiver.

'I didn't want you to know how much you had hurt me,' he muttered gruffly.

'When did you come back?' - .

'Yesterday... as soon as I could. I assumed you'd be here... and then I called everywhere I could think of and panic set in. I was afraid you had had an accident. I checked with the police.'

'I went up north to meet Elissa.'

In the act of walking him into the house, Tony spun his dark head to him at speed. 'You... what?'

'I spent the night there. I liked her—' 'You spent the night?'

Peter relished Tony’s stunned reaction. 'When I heard that name, I thought I had discovered a secret mistress. I decided to confront her—'

'Dio...' Tony had paled. 'So that is where you have been all this time.'

'But I soon realized I had nothing to worry about. I don't know where anyone got the idea that Elissa and I look alike...'

'Howard started that nonsense at the wedding,' Tony admitted grudgingly, his arm tightening round Peter as if Tony feared that he might pull away. 'Elissa once had hair like yours, but that was the only real similarity between you. Howard has very poor eyesight but he's too vain to wear glasses. I doubt if he even remembers Elissa that well.'

'Yet Claudia told me I was Elissa's double.'

Tony vented an angry imprecation in his own language.

Peter smiled sweetly. 'And I don't recall you denying it when I mentioned the idea. Do you think you could explain that, Tony?'

A slight darkening of color had highlighted Tony’s hard cheekbones. 'Stuck for a ready excuse?' Peter probed in mock disbelief. 'I don't believe it.'

Tony released his breath in a hiss. 'I thought a little jealousy might give your thoughts a new direction—'

'Back to you... and away from Brian,' Peter guessed. 'But then I wasn't thinking about Brian at the time.'

'Every time I saw your face cloud, every time you went quiet, I assumed he was on your mind,' Tony confessed tautly. 'I couldn't stop doing it even though I realized I was being unreasonable. After all, I had married you knowing that you loved another man. I thought I could be patient but I found that a much tougher challenge than I had imagined.'

'You should have told me you were still in contact with Elissa.'

'My family have the very embarrassing habit of behaving as though Elissa was this great tragic love who wrecked my life and broke my heart and whom I never recovered from,' Tony said through decidedly gritted teeth. 'I didn't mind you wondering a little about that affair but I certainly didn't want you getting the same maudlin ideas fixed in your head.'

'Didn't you put them there in the first place?'

'The day I told you about her, I was attempting to empathize with you,' Tony admitted wryly. 'But I was very young when I met Elissa. It was first love and intense but I wasn't ready to make the kind of commitment she needed. She was right to leave before we ended up hating each other but at the time I felt she had just used me as an escape from a rotten marriage. Meeting up with her again a couple of years later put paid to that. We were both able to laugh about what a bad match we were once the romance wore off.'

'So you stayed friends?'

'No, we went our separate ways until three years ago when she phoned and asked me for financial advice. John had just been declared bankrupt. They were in a real mess. I was happy to help.'

'That was a kind thing to do.'

Tony shrugged. "They're a pleasant couple, but hopeless in business.'

'Were you really worried sick about me last night?' Peter pressed.

'Panicking.' His deep voice fractured as his eyes collided with his searching gaze. 'So when did you decide to come home?' 'Five minutes after the helicopter took off.' Tony reached for Peter’s hands again. 'I know I was a real swine but I was hurting myself as much as I was hurting you. Dio, amore, I have loved you for so long...' 'How long?' Peter whispered shakily. 'The first month you started working for me,' Tony confided heavily.

In shock, Peter stared back at him. 'But you told me you didn't believe in love—'

'Peter, I would have told you the sky was pink if it would have impressed you. I would have done and said anything it took to persuade you that it was a good idea to marry me,' Tony admitted, scanning the omega’s shaken face with wry comprehension. 'If I had told you how I really felt, it might have frightened you off. You're so considerate about other people's feelings that you could have decided it wouldn't be fair to marry me.'

'So you offered me a marriage of convenience.' 'Non-threatening.'

'And didn't complain about anything until you had that ring on my finger,' Peter said, and he remembered him saying that he had expected too much from him and finally understood why. The knowledge that Tony had been in love with Peter for such a long time stunned him. 'I was terrified you would get cold feet.' 'But you smoldered in silence.' 'I thought I could be patient—' 'You're not the patient type,' he interposed absently. 'And when I heard that Brian and your cousin had split up and guessed where you had to be...' Tony paused, his dark eyes revealing lingering pain. 'And you'd lied to me. It was one hell of a shock. I went right off the rails—

'Tony, I—' Peter began strikingly, distressed by what he read in his expressive gaze.

'But I still came back. I didn't believe your version of events for one moment, though. Then your aunt phoned this morning and asked me to tell you that she was grateful for a little favor you'd done for her and would I please pass on the message that Brian and Jane were talking again. She had no idea that I knew what she was referring to...' Tony's troubled features clenched. 'Peter... I should have trusted you.'

'When people lie, trust can be very difficult,' he conceded softly.

'If you hadn't lied, you wouldn't have done any little favor,' Tony gritted. 'I'd have torn him limb from limb!'

'No, you might have felt sorry for him. Jane faked being pregnant.'

Tony absorbed that with a complete lack of interest, his burning gaze engaged in roving over Peter. 'Did you mean it when you said you loved me?'

Peter lifted possessive hands to his broad shoulders and looked up at him with glowing eyes. 'What do you think?'

'I think I want you to say it at least once every five minutes.' 'I love you...'

His lean hands were unsteady as he cupped Peter’s cheeks. 'I don't know how you didn't see that I was madly in love with you, greedy for your attention, possessive of your every thought...'

His hungry mouth closed over his and the aching emptiness was banished forever as he hauled Peter up into his arms and carried him upstairs. 'Would you really have to be a mental case to want my baby?' Tony muttered between hot, drugging kisses that made him wildly responsive senses swim.

'Do we get to do this a lot in pursuit of the objective?' 'Do we need an excuse?'

They decided that they didn't and concentrated on the difficulties of getting undressed when neither of them was prepared to stop long enough to accomplish that feat. A long time later they lay entwined, so mutually entranced that even the sound of a not too distant workman's hammer didn't penetrate the heady sense of wonder they were both experiencing.

And then a stray thought occurred to Peter. 'Tony...do you think you could fix Brian up with a better job?'

As his dark eyes shimmered and tensed Peter rested a teasing fingertip against the compressed line of his mouth. 'I don't object to you helping Elissa and her family, do I?'

'No, but-'

'Brian and Jane's marriage would have a much better chance of succeeding if he was earning a bit more.'

His tension evaporated as that sank in.

Peter smiled with sunny satisfaction at him. 'I'm learning how to think like you do, my love—you had better watch out.'

'All that jealousy stuff is behind me,' Tony asserted, fiercely on the defensive.

'Because now you know you didn't need to be jealous. I started falling for you the very first day; how could I have failed to do anything else?' Peter leant over him, tenderly amused that Tony could have his insecurities too. 'You're gorgeous, you're sexy, and sneaky only when it's in my best interests...and, by the way, Brian does not want to work in Alaska.'

'Dubai is currently doing very well in the tourist market? They would get a break from an interfering bunch of in-laws, a lively social life, sunshine and a maid to do the cooking.' Tony treated him to a slashing smile of megawatt intensity. 'What do you think?'

'I think you're going to keep me on my toes,' Peter admitted, transfixed by the speed with which Tony had responded to the challenge.

'And I think that you are the best thing that ever happened to me, amore mio.' And with the aid of one passionate kiss Tony ensured that other people's problems were the very last thing on the omega’s mind. Peter gave himself up blissfully to sensation instead.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> ***THIS IS AN ADAPATION OF A STORY BY LYNNE GRAHAM***  
> *******ALL CREDITS GOES TO THE RIGHTFUL OWNER*********
> 
> Did you like it?


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